Crawling
by Literary Alchemist
Summary: What happened after Heather killed the God? What happened to Angela after the stairwell? Chapter 23 up.
1. The Itch

Crawling…

**Chapter 1 – The Itch.**

People aren't born monsters, they become them.

They say that even Hitler might have been a decent guy to start with. You can just imagine him sitting there burning up with envy and anger at the world around him. Trouble is…there's only so much any guy can take before he snaps.

I guess I'm any guy. Well, I was, anyway.

My name's Nathan Crawley, and I've been living in South Ashfield all my life. Never even set foot in Silent Hill till last week. Figured it'd be a holiday, that I might get some rest, get my head back on straight, fix my…my distractions. Or something. We've been married for about 8 years, my wife and I. The first 3 were bliss, the next 3 very good, and so on. Just lately, though, it's been getting hard. I could swear there didn't use to be that many hot chicks on the subway, nor that Lisa, my wife used to be so fucking dumb. Christ, the number of times these past months I've had to tell her to just shut her fuckin' trap. She never used to whine and cry so much, neither. It's fucking difficult to keep my temper, especially with all the provocation.

Take the day before I got here, for example, the dumb bitch was bringing me my dinner (late, as usual) and spilt it all over my lap. Well, I admit I lost my temper a little, and I may have slapped her a little harder than I shoulda. I…I can't quite remember what happened after that, but we had a helluva fight, I know that. When I left the apartment I had tomato sauce all over my shirt, so I had to go out of my way to buy a new one. After I walked about the town for a bit, I decided I needed a break to clear my head, sort myself out a bit. So I came out here for a few days off, ran into some religious freak on the way out of the station, she wanted me to take some flower or other, as a token of 'God's love' for me. Apparently she wants to save us all, take us to Paradise or some such mumbo-jumbo bullshit. God, that is, not the freak. Though I could probably have taken her to Paradise too, she was cute enough.

The flower, though, the flower was a weed. Completely out of proportion to how good the religious girl looked. Smelt terrible, too, and I musta got some of the sap or something under my fingernails, cause my lunch just did not taste right.

Lunch at the Happy Burger… that's where it all started to go wrong.

The monsters didn't make my day much better either. Let me tell you about my day, it seems like it was only yesterday, though it was probably the better part of a week ago. Time doesn't seem to run normally in this town. Almost as though nature Herself has abdicated in disgust. Sounds stupid, right? Just wait till I tell you about my time here. It won't sound so stupid then.


	2. Into The Woods

**Chapter 2 – Into the Woods.**

Like I said, lunch didn't taste right at all, so I left the Mall and headed out of town to the woods nearby. After all, this is supposed to be a vacation, right? Time to clear my head and all, so I figured some time by myself in the woods would do me good. Just so long as I don't run into any damn Girl Scout camps or any shit like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for female equality or whatall, but little girls just shouldn't be out in the woods by themselves. It's bad for everyone, bad for the men they're trying to replace with their 'we're as good as you in _every respect_' bullcrap, and bad for the girls. The world's a rough place these days, is all I'm saying, and some pretty young thing out by herself in the middle of a forest you could easily lose an airliner in is just _asking_ for trouble. I'm just sayin'.

So there I am, out in the middle of the woods, minding my own beeswax, when I hear this noise up ahead, like a panting and scrabbling. I'm something of a nature-lover, me, so I go to investigate, thinking I might get lucky and see some local wildlife. A cougar or something, don't ask me the damn genus and species of what I was hoping to see. I love nature, I just don't see the sense in pretending you can pin it to a board like a damn butterfly in a lab and say 'this is nature, we're _studying_ it', and I _sure_ as hell don't worship it like the damn hippies or those religious freaks who go round handing out flowers in the name of Mother God (more damn feminists, I'm telling ya…one of these days it's all gonna end in tears). So anyway, I get real quiet-like, so as not to spook the animals, and creep up in that direction, keeping a sharp ear out just like they teach you in the Scouts. Always prepared, I slip a knife from my belt-sheath in case it's some pissed-off grizzly or something (like I said, don't ask me names for these things. I'm a humble man, and just knowing they're beautiful has always been enough for _me_).

Rounding a tree, I look up ahead to see…well, what do I see? Local wildlife, I guess. Damn, I _love_ nature, and that girl there's worthy of some quality nature-loving any time of the day or night. Damnfool thing to do, though, exposing her behind to the whole world like that clambering over riverside rocks. Not to mention her little bitty skirt riding up those damn _fine_ thighs of hers. Lord have mercy, I do believe I'm in love. She straightens up, having reached the far side of the river now by those stepping stones some thoughtful soul left for all future nature-lovers and…uh…local wildlife, straightens out the kinks in her skirt, walks on further. The long plants brush against her long, toned legs and, with a last glint of the sun on her long, burning golden hair, she's gone from my sight.

Well, that just won't do, so I set off after her. I'm not as quick or nimble as her, though, and I start finding it hard to keep my balance about half way across. I sway once, twice, and then suddenly I'm flat on my ass in the riverbed. I get up in a hurry, so's not to drown my young self (the body can only survive without oxygen for a few seconds, I'm told) and find the water only reaches up to my waist. Wading forward, I notice something that I coulda sworn wasn't there before. Written in red, a message on the rocks of the riverbank '**Don't Cross the Rubicon**'. I blinked, confused. The Rubi-whatnow? The river, though, the river's churning, as though to keep me from reaching that bank of angels, that paradise which houses my newfound golden angel. I don't want much, just another glimpse of that long hair, those divine thighs, maybe even to talk to her, just talk to her. I'm a humble man, and a gentleman, and I aint never pressed my luck (or anything else) with the ladies. There were a few times the old lady said she didn't want it, but she was just playing with me, I could tell, and when she lay all quiet and curled up afterwards, I knew it was really contentment and not what she claimed. She was just playing hard to get.

Meantime, the river's getting outta hand, and I could swear it's turning red. I blink, dazed and confused, to clear my eyes. The river's clear again, though still resisting my progress, and there's still a message, though it's written badly now, like some dumb spotty teen chick might write in her journal. As I get closer, I can read it properly. '**Last Chance! Turn Back!**' Turn back? Never see that wildlife again? Screw you, pal, I'm a nature lover on vacation and I'm gonna keep walking. In a real hurry now, worried that I might have fallen too far behind that divine behind, I scramble over the riverbank rocks to go on, when something catches my eye and I turn quickly. What the hell? For an instant there, the river was running blood-red, I'll swear it on the Holy Bible, and there were….monsters crawling up out of it. Now, though, the river was running on happily, not surging or frothing, and certainly not running with blood. The only thing crawling up out of it was me, and I sure as hell wasn't a monster. At least, _I_ thought so.

As I set off into the woods to follow my wildlife find, the sun seemed to go behind a cloud, the wind began to pick up, and a slight fog came rising up from the forest floor. I wish now, oh how I wish, that I had heeded those warnings, that I had run back away from that fog. Nevermore, old friends. Nevermore…


	3. Unexpected Company

**A/N - If you don't like the holes in the story, read A Walk in the Woods. The two are written for each other. Enjoy. **

**Chapter 3 – Unexpected Company**

I followed her. On and on I followed her. It got harder and harder to do, though, even the bright green of her top (bodywarmer, I think they call those things. I can think of better ways to keep a body warm, but hell, whatever) and denim blue of her skirt got harder to see. The fog was definitely thickening. _Hell with this,_ I thought, and started running to catch up to her. I had been planning to make the meeting a kind of accidental-like thing. A kind of 'Oh! Hi! Didn't expect to meet anyone out here! What's that, you live around here? Well maybe you can show me round the place.' That sort of thing. Fuck it, I'd have to adapt the plans. That or stay lost in this damn patch of weeds for ever.

I hurried up, trying to keep that glint of golden hair in sight before it got lost in the mist. Stupid. I shoulda been watching my step, not the damn blonde. I dunno how it happened, though, I'm normally so sure-footed, it was almost like the forest wanted me to fall. Yeah, sure, go ahead and laugh. You go walk in those woods, see if you can call me a liar. So there's me flat on my face sprawled like an ass all over the dirt, hands out on the ground, and the hard metal of my revolver digging into my hips. Damn, that stuff hurts. I wouldn't have brung it if I hadn't heard about all the wildlife out here in the woods, but you can't be too careful, a man never knows what he might come up against. I was about to find out. From behind me, I heard, crisp and clear, footsteps as of a tall guy walkin slowly up a road. The kinda slow, deliberate step you see in a priest walkin up an aisle to an altar, or a monk in a monkery. With the wind knocked out of me and my vision blurred, I couldn't make out much of things, and I sure as hell couldn't move to see. The guy kept comin on, step after horrible step, till he stopped right by my right hand.

A low chuckle, and he shifted his weight. **All** his weight, right onto my hand. It still twinges even now, and that musta been a day or three ago, though it's hard to keep track of time out here. The pain woke me all the way up, I can tell ya, though I still couldn't move much at all. I screamed out at the pain, I don't mind telling ya. I'm not too proud to admit I yelled out. He kept the weight on, shifting it slightly without ever taking it off. Guess he wanted to keep it interesting for me. How nice of him, the bastard. And then he spoke. I'll never forget that voice. It wasn't a thunder, nor a roar, it weren't a whisper neither. A still, calm voice, sayin loud and clear.

"You cannot go home again. Not now you've crossed the river. You are in _our_ world now, with all that that entails, with all that you must now gamble. That choice you have made, and thus no longer have. _However_..' He paused, and shifted his weight again, makin me yell out again, "However…you still have _some_ choices. The girl you're following, you're following for low reasons, evil ones. Leave off following her, pursue your own path, face your own battle and your own demons. If you don't, they'll hunt you down anyway." He stepped off my hand, and I could feel the blood rushing back into the battered veins, which just added one kind of pain to another. I can still see those boots now, that long black trenchcoat hanging down.

"One other thing," the bastard said to me, still calm as a frozen lake, "You might be thinking that you've got nowhere else to go, that I'm not offering you a choice. You'd be wrong. When you stand up, you'll see a corridor in the fog. Take that path and you'll be a lot better off than if you follow the girl to the Mother of the God. Remember that, and you might make it out of here alive" I blinked groggily, and rolled my head to look up at him, maybe even, if I could get in enough strength, tell him what I thought of his 'choices', but there was nothing there. Just footprints, and a black silhouette disappearing in the direction of my golden angel, my new favourite wildlife.

Still all shot to hell, I got up. Slowly. I swayed once, twice, and looked around with clearing vision. Off to my right, the fog cleared, and I could see a whole patch of forest with real afternoon sunshine falling through it. No long legged wildlife, but no crazy sadists in trenchcoats, either. I shook my head in self-disgust, I ain't proud, but I've never been one to back down to arrogant threats, neither. Turning my back on the corridor, I followed the bootprints of the moron who'd taken off after my girl.

Some time after that I lost the tracks under the underbrush, and had to stick close to the dirt to still see them. After a while, though, even those disappeared, and all I could see were wolf tracks, lots of them, like a whole pack had run through. They were runnin in the same general direction, though, so I kept goin in that way. It was about ten minutes after that that I ran into company. Monsters, I guess you could call them. They looked like…well, I guess they looked kinda human, if you covered a human with yellow-white plastic and put a blowtorch to it, so that the stuff ran. Except this wasn't plastic, it was skin, the eyes lidless and red, running with blood, their mouths opening in shrieks I've heard in my dreams every night since, and probably will till I die. They weren't clothed, neither. Just a kind of mottled green colour across the groin and most of the chest. They swung their arms at me, long long arms, and one caught me, and pulled me into itself. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move anything cept my head, and that thing had sharp teeth, breath like an oven, and it was gonna bite me, and bite hard. So I panicked. I kicked, yelled, trashed my head back and forward, and musta caught it a knock on its own head, cause it let me go and fell back. The other two started to close in, and I fumbled my revolver, my hand screamin at me in agony.

Oh, the fear. Friends, I can't tell ya how much I feared at that moment, it was beyond anything you've ever known, almost a pleasure, though a pleasure of hell herself. Eventually I got the gun under grips, and fired off a shot at the one on the right. The slug went straight through, and it shimmered and vanished. I looked to the other one, and could hardly see it against the fog, and it looked like it was fading. The one I'd hit, though, was getting its strength back and moving in on me again, so I raised the gun, took as good an aim as I could, and fingered the trigger. The damn thing's head exploded like a watermelon, and the shade of the other monster to my left let out a shriek that went right through my heart, freezing it cold for an instant, and faded entirely. Slumping down, I looked for the tracks I'd been following, and couldn't find them. I couldn't find anything, and felt my stomach start to bubble and chill within me. Lost! And lost with such monsters for company! It couldn't be, it mustn't be, there must be something. Just then I heard a howling go up, ahead and off to the right from me. The wolves had found something, and it might be my girl. Mine, not theirs. I had to protect what was mine, so I ran.

As I ran, I could see, just out of the corner of my eye, a monster on either side, keeping up with me, though making no sound but for a low squealing. When I turned my head to see either one properly, though, it faded right out. A ghost of a horror. A couple times I almost ran smack into a tree from looking out to those…those _things_, and so I had to listen in to the sounds of the wolves and hope I didn't get there too late. Eventually I arrived at a clearing of fog, and could see into a clearing of trees, where my blonde angel was lying sprawled on the dirt, arms by her sides, legs open, feet drawn in close. Waiting for me. I stopped and looked at her, just looked, and as I looked I saw the rest of the clearing and the wolf pack. They'd been… I dunno what they'd been, but they were sure all over the place, generally hanging out. Heads and furry limbs all over the place, intestines falling out through massive gouges in their sides, and in the middle, sleeping, a massive black… dog. Or wolf. Or something. Too big and bulky to be a grey like the ones lying in pieces around it, and too powerful, shaggy and wild to be a dog. One last wolf was still alive, though, making a last effort to reach my girl. My heart leapt into my mouth, I can tell ya, to come all this way just to lose her to some bloody animal wouldn't have been fair. Not after all I'd been through. I woulda gone in to save her myself, you know. If it hadn't been for that massive black abomination in the middle of the dirt. Just looking at it, I knew it'd kill me as soon as look at me, maybe quicker.

It woke, saw the wolf, and watched. It musta thought nothing of it, or that the thing would die trying to get to my girl, cause it made no move. No move at all till the thing was almost on her, then it jumped. No, I don't mean it got up, growled and sprang. I mean it straight out leapt. It dove straight into the wolf and ripped it apart from the inside, the blood spattered everywhere, even on me. The head rolled up against her boots, against those beautiful legs, and then the Thing did something I still can't figure. It brought the head back to the body. It looked straight at Her, at my girl, and wiped its snout, just like I'd wipe my mouth at a dinner table table. It sniffed the air above it, and turned to look straight at me. Those eyes…my dear God, those eyes. Like the outermost emptiness of space. Nothing but nothing, black as death and hot as hell. It growled at me, the Thing growled and I felt all the earth shake and all my body tremble in the presence of that awful Beast. My nerve broke, I turned tail and ran, its barking after me like shouts of contempt at my back.

After running a while, I stopped and leant against a tree. It felt…friendly. As though it knew me, and wanted to help me. I straightened up, and felt my pride return to me. My resolve strengthened in me, and I turned and followed my tracks back to the clearing. I felt my fear come back as I returned, and I shook at the memory of that terrible Thing. But I had my pride, didn't I? I had to go on, or I'd have just been some whipped little boy. I followed their trail out of the clearing, they seemed to have walked out together. I shuddered, and walked on. Eventually I could see them up ahead, almost walking hand in paw, Beauty and the Beast in a smalltown forest. Suddenly they stopped, and It raised its head again, sniffing the air once again, while my girl leant down to mutter something to it. Yeah, good doggy. Right. If I could just be sure I'd hit you, I'd shoot you down right now you damn mutt. Then they ran, it was all I could do to keep up. I lost them in the end, though, and had to follow their tracks from the earth again, with my head right up against the dirt every step of the way.

That's why it was that I came to find a pair of empty boots with no further prints, cept save those of that damned Beast, that hellhound and, standing bewildered, felt the cold prickle of a knife-tip against the base of my spine, froze solid, and heard a young, steady voice speaking firmly and deliberately from behind me.

"You just stay where you are, pal. Don't you move a fucking muscle. You and me, we're gonna have us a little chat…"

**A/N - So? You likee?  
**


	4. A Little Chat

It's getting harder to think now... I want to go on with the story, I need to tell you what happened...but somehow it's hard to think. Like my thoughts are disconnected, broken trains running up and down twisted tracks in all different ways. I'll try though. I'll take a deep breath and try to tell you what happened, though I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. Long enough to get to this part, anyway, I think. I can make it as far as here, sitting in the Konami Burger by the bridge, soda in one hand, tape recorder next to...ha, well, let's call it my other hand. I'll make it this far before I let myself stop telling you. It's almost time to go on, though the clocks don't work here and there's no sun, I can feel it. It's almost time.

So there I was, at the mercy of some jumped-up kid. Some idiot girl with the _nerve_, the god-damned nerve to call me 'motherfucker'. I could break this bitch in half right here, I thought, but then she told me she had another knife. And if I tried to draw my gun, I'd be skewered before I could aim. The kid was young, but I was at one hell of a disadvantage, I'm an honest man, know my limits, and there's no sense gettin gutted unnecessarily. I raised my hands, slowly.

"Easy, kid. I'm not out to hurt you. I'm not armed"

She didn't believe me, of course. Not that there was any reason to. But then she took the knife up to my neck, and then frisked me. Damn. So that was that for my revolver, of course. Greedy bitch took it for herself, spun me round and pushed me back. I fell over onto my ass, facing her, feeling just that little bit angry with her. Hell, all I'd wanted to do was follow her, watch how beautiful she was, maybe even meet her and...talk to her a little. That's all. Then those _things_ jumped me, the place filled up with fog and monsters. And that guy in the coat. Somehow he gives me the creeps worst of all. Him and that damn Dog. So yeah, I was following her, I had to if I wanted to get out in one piece. She's asking me my name, calling me insults, like I tried to jump her, like I'm a monster myself. I'll bet she's just fine, though, that shaking's just her gloating over having me at her mercy. She didn't see those things, she doesn't know what I've been through. She wouldn't care either.

"You know, kid, you got a hell of a mouth on you..." I start. Bang! She shoots at my hand, missing it by inches. If she was shooting to miss or not I don't know, and don't rightly care. Now I'm getting pissed at her, and she's still trying to interrogate me. Hell, this is _not_ the vacation I had in mind. Sure, young blondes were definitely something I wanted to include, but not like this. And while I'm freezing on the cold ground, that Dog could be anywhere, it could be right behind me. I look over my shoulder, I know it ran off in that direction.

"Hey, dick!" The girl's mouthing off again. Damn but that's a good mouth, if only it weren't so dirty. "I'm not boring you here, am I?" I turn back to her, back exposed to whatever might be out there in the fog. Ok, so I guess we'll have a 'chat', I thought. I raised a hand, palm open, nice and slow.

"Ok, sweetheart, you want a chat? So let's chat. My name's Nathan Crawley, I'm here on vacation, I just got here, so just relax a little, wouldya?" I've always had a way with the ladies, and this one, so young and full of life, would be a real great prize. I could see her softening as I talked. "I was out in the woods, just like you, when the fog hit, I saw you ahead of me and followed you to try to get out of the forest, that's all. I guess you're twitchy cause of the wolves, huh?" Nice and easy, Nate, nice and easy. She's simmering down now, you might still have a chance here, fella.

We talked about the woods, about our time in there, the weird fog, and if we'd had time I guess we coulda gone on to talk of many things. Of sailing ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. But we were both still pretty freaked at the woods and the fog, she especially cause of the wolves, and me because of those things. I mentioned them to her, just in a roundabout way, but she hadn't seen anything other than those wolves and that damn Dog. She seemed to like it, though, how's that for fucked up? Some big furry demon from Hell itself and she acts like its a great big teddy bear. We both agreed, though, that it wasn't a good idea to stay out in such thick fog with...things nearby, and she, being local, knew that we were just a little bit away from a local mall. So we set off to cross the park and get to the mall.

We'd walked for about five minutes before we hit a concrete path. Following it up and out, we crossed a miniature train track, on which small rollercoaster-type cars made to look like steam trains run round and round with noisy screaming kids. No noises or screaming, though, nothing but nothing. The cold, empty fog, the tracks at our feet, and the two of us there alone, crossing a chill void together.

She, my golden angel, being younger and faster, outpaced me pretty quick. Which is why I was hurrying to keep up and not paying attention to much else. So when I saw a shadow of a woman in the fog to my right, I didn't know if I'd seen it properly or not, so I went after it. Whoever it was, she looked too much like Lisa, nobody else walked quite like that. I called to Kate, but she'd passed outta sight. Lisa was gone, too, and I had no idea if it'd even been her, so I went back to the path, and found myself at an entrance to the mall before long. No sign of Kate, though. I entered and hit the service stairs. Somehow I didn't want to stay on the first floor even long enough to find the elevators or anything, there was a bad feel to the place, though the Happy Burger looked inviting enough, and I figured I'd go back later to see if I could scrounge some food. I got off the stairs at the second floor, and went in the first door that'd open. Fred's Fashions, the sign on the door said. Well, it seemed like Fred hadn't been making many fashions lately, the only clothes there were three different outfits, all for young women. A skirt and jacket, jeans and a sweater, and some kind of army pants with a tough shirt, all in a kind of gray-white color. A piece of paper was pinned to the jeans and sweater. 'KATE - These will be useful'.


	5. Entering the Mall

I stood astonished. The complete god-damn lunacy of the whole thing was...was just crazy. First this freakish fog, then the monsters in the woods (and I still wasn't sure _what_ the hell had happened there, especially since the girl, Kate, hadn't seen anything like them, was I going crazy myself?) and now the desolate mall, all grimy and filthy, like the cleaning crew hadn't so much been fired as _set_ on fire and then been rubbed all over the place, ashes, blood and oozing burn wounds combined to redecorate. So yeah, I'd ducked outta sight, headed for higher ground, and got into the first store with an open door for sanctuary. To find a choice of _outfits_? What the hell?

I read the note over. 'These will be useful' A pair of denim pants and a sweater would be _useful_ against those freaks out there? Then I remembered the woods themselves, how they'd turned from fluffy leaves and sunshine to a patch of scratching, clawing thornbushes, how the wolves had gone after her sweet young flesh. In a way, she'd been asking for trouble from the start. All sorts of trouble, I thought, remembering the long, slow look I'd taken at her legs and tits when she'd been standing over me. Oh yeah, all sorts. Plus which...a bright green jacket with no sleeves in a cold white fog? She stood out like a damn lighthouse, that's how I'd been following her. So this bundle of rags was a way for her to protect herself! She could handle the gun she'd taken from me. _My gun_, thank you so very much, she could handle _my_ gun that she'd _stolen_ from me. And she had those two sharp knives, my back and neck still twinged from the memory. So clothes like this would be...to help her disappear, to make her invisible.

I was furious. My golden angel, suddenly to be hidden from me? I might never see her again, never get to watch those lovely legs and that wondrous ass. These ugly rags would see to that. Or not... I grabbed the clothes, the whole lot, and started looking for a garbage can to stuff them, and then stopped. I realised I could make a better move here after all. I took the note off the denims, nice and easy, and pinned it to the skirt and the tough shirt, piercing the fabric and tying them together with the cold steel.. Perfect. The best of both worlds. Really I was doing the kid a favour, she'd stay warm and still look great. The other ugly rags, though, had to go.

I started hunting around the store, sweating it slightly that she might arrive soon and catch me at it. She'd freak, get all hysterical. Women do that too much, you know, even when they're not full women yet, it must be something in the genetics or so. An XX gene equalling extra craziness or something. Don't ask me. I found a hidey-hole in a cabinet under the cash desk and stuffed them in there. There was, to my surprise, a writing pad on the desk, but turned outward, so you could only get at it from the outer edge. Some automatic handgun ammo and revolver ammo were also sat there, right next to it. I coulda sworn none of that had been there before I put the clothes in the cabinet. Nevermind. I figured that a part of the world, or effect or whatever _on_ the world, that could make Dog monsters, call up unearthly fogs and smear entire malls with blood and soot might not be completely logical. Resolving to start expecting the unexpected, I grabbed the handgun bullets. The revolver bullets were no use to me now that bitch Kate had my revolver, and if she came here and picked up the clothes I'd left her, she'd find the bullets too, which meant I'd be more likely to see her survive any monsters she might still meet, and I'd be more likely to get a loaded gun back when I took my property back from the stupid girl.

I was about to leave when something on the pad caught my eye. A blood red stain, pulsing with some kinda weird light. I went to touch it and musta...I dunno, I musta blacked out, because I remember not remembering, if you get my drift. After I touched it there's a blank in my mind, and the next thing I remember is taking my hand back from the pad and wondering 'what the _fuck_ just happened there?' One other thing, the pad wasn't blank anymore. A single entry stood in crimson ink: Nathan Crawley - Fred's Fashions. You better believe I got the _fuck_ outta there when I saw that.

Back in the main area of the mall, I saw the structure of the place was a kind of concrete donut shape. A ring of stores, eateries and whatever else around a gap in the middle so that you could look up or down from one storey to another and not feel crowded in. I didn't feel crowded in, I felt exposed, naked to the grubbiness and filth of the place...and starting to get spooked about what else might be in here with me. After all, blood smears on walls don't get there by themselves, and the amount of blood meant someone had died, and that not too long ago, either. I needed to get back in a contained place, somewhere I didn't feel like anything could suddenly drop down from the next storey up and claw my face off or crawl up from beneath me and start munching on me. I headed back to the service stairwell, giving just a little glance at a dead dog lying outside a bakery directly opposite me. Death seemed to be catching, but there was no sense in sticking around for it to catch _me_.

Once on the stairwell, I decided to head back down to the Happy Burger. Whatever had been spooking me about the place before, I was feeling much braver about it now. Another dead dog lay across the entrance to the mall, off on my left as I left the stairwell, and this one being closer I could see it had most likely been skinned alive. Things skinned when they're dead don't bleed so much (trust me on this one, there's more than one way to skin a cat). Nothing could survive that, though, and of all dogs, dead ones are the least dangerous. So I turned my back on it and headed for the Happy Burger, ignoring my imagination telling me I could hear its claws clicking on the paving stones, hear its blood dripping as it came towards me. I almost made it, too, but I couldn't not look back, just couldn't. And there it was, swaggering towards me, longer than most dogs, about the size of a wolf maybe, the damn corpse was coming towards me, growling and slobbering. I panicked and dove through the doors of the burger joint, slammed them shut behind me and leant on them to keep them shut and get my breath back. As I stood there, gasping for breath, watching a garbage can I'd knocked flying with the doors roll to a stop, I took in my surroundings. Took in the presence of the blonde girl from the woods, Kate, sat at a table near the serving counter, with a coffee mug and smoking ashtray on the table in front of her. I've never seen anyone look so shocked, nor been so shocked to find someone in a burger bar.

**A/N - It's gonna get better. Promise.**


	6. Old Friends

We were gaping at each other for the longest time before either one of us stirred. I moved first, remembering the dog, and grabbed the garbage bin that had been knocked flying by the doors and put it bang in front of the doors, then added another one from the other side of the doors, this one much heavier. The monster seemed to have gone now, though I was sure I'd see it again, I guess I didn't wanna take any chances. Well, would you?

"You again." she said from behind me, "I thought you'd gotten lost in the fog. You ok? I saw some kind of weird animal outside, scared the hell out of me. It didn't get you, did it?" Well, at least she was concerned about me. Sweet kid, really. When she's not trying to kill a guy or steal his stuff, that is.

Turning, I saw her bringa knapsack out from under the table, her left hand rummaging inside, the other on the table itself. The ashtray smouldered next to her, a coffee cup with a spill down it further along the table. So she'd left me in the fog, been scared by one of those things, and come in here to have a coffee and a cigarette. Right. Suddenly it seemed a lot less likely that she was all that sweet, but I can play along as well as the next guy.

"Yeah, I'm ok," I said "one came after me, but I guess it was asleep before it noticed me or something. That was too close for comfort, though. At least you believe me now about the monsters, right? Right?" She looked at me thoughtfully, considering things slowly, then turned and took the cigarette from the ashtray and held it up, watching it smoulder. In those clear bright eyes I could see a thousand lives and deaths being considered, all the truth and deceit I could possibly think of being thought of and sorted by her. She tapped it out into the ashtray, and put it back in. Turning to me again she spoke.

"Ok. I believe you. Now what are we gonna do about it? The state this place is in...they only finished building it a couple years back, it hasn't even been open long enough to get as crappy as this. Makes me wonder if maybe it's not just a few things that've gone wrong. Maybe..." she considered the ashtray again, ran a slender finger up the spill on the coffee cup, "maybe it's the whole town that's been affected? Hah! Now maybe _you'll_ think that _I'm_ crazy" She brought the coffee cup up to her pretty little mouth, took a small sip, and gagged violently. Her face screwed up like she'd just been made to smell a sewer. "Ugh! How the hell did he drink that?" she gasped, pushing the cup as far away as she could reach.

"Look, nevermind the coffee, we have to figure out how to get the hell out of here." I was amazed. Of all the things to worry about right now, coffee? Hold on...

"Wait. Stop. How did _who_ drink that?" I asked slowly. "There's no-one else here, and no signs of other people." I had forgotten about Lisa, or the person I thought was Lisa. I went up to the counter to look for other doors. There was only one, off to the right, and that was padlocked closed from the inside. I told Kate about the padlock and she went pale.

"You're sure that's the only door?" she asked quietly, like she was trying not to panic or something. Hell, yes, I was sure, I answered her, but I went to check it out anyway, going back into the kitchens, to check out as much of the place as I could access. No changes though, just two doors to the entire area; the entrance door I'd blocked, and the padlocked door I'd told her about. When I told her that, she just buried her face in her hands and groaned like she'd just had to admit two plus two made five.

"Come on Kate, first this mystery coffee, and now some guy who can't have been here? What the hell are you talking about?" I asked jokingly. She snapped her head round angrily.

"Mystery coffee? Guy who wasn't here! What, you think I'm nuts? You think I _like_ a shopping mall complete with demon dogs and disappearing guys? The burger-flipper was bad enough, but the guy in the coat..."

"Woah! Stop there. Guy in a coat? Like, some big black thing?"

"Yeah, that's the one, he was sat right here. That's his cigarette and his cup, and just as you came in he vanished."

"So...? What did he want, what did he say?"

She chewed her lip a little, thinking again, choosing what to say very carefully. I wondered what she was gonna hide from me, still wonder what she was hiding. Then she decided, and told me that he'd been here to warn her about the town, that the school was very dangerous, and that he 'couldn't tell her' what was going on, why this town's so messed up. I have some idea now, but back then, on that first day here (if you can talk about days in this place) I just wanted straight answers and wasn't pleased at not getting any.

"Well, Katie," I started, "that sounds a lot like the bastard who messed up my hand. I wouldn't trust anything he says. Oh yeah, that's right, I've met him too. Said something about the mother of the god or something like that and stomped on my hand when I fell over" I waved my swollen hand, which was now turning an ugly purple. "If he's gonna beat on guys that need help, I wonder what he'd say to a lost little girl to get her to trust him? You might wanna think about that, Katie"

She did not like that. Reaching into the knapsack, she pulled out my gun and levelled it at me again.

"And you might wanna think about getting the hell outta here, Crawley. I don't know what the hell you're up to here, but I don't think I like it and I sure as hell don't trust you. I'm not dumb enough to give you your gun back, but I'm not that heartless that you don't get some help from me, so here.." She shifted her weight, and pulled something from her waist, threw it to me, and then threw a bottle from the knapsack to me, it said 'heth drk' on the side. The knife's sheath was still warm from her body's heat, "and the drink is a health drink" she added. "A drink for your health. Now get the hell outta here, and if you ever call me Katie again or get too close, I will shoot you. That's a promise"

I shifted the bin out of the way and left, the warmth of the sheath fading rapidly against the cold of the deserted mall. Once again I was alone and exposed. Once again I was lost. But that could change. I had seen a map of the place in the service stairwell, and there was probably a hallway with some offices somewhere nearby. If I could just get an idea of how this place was laid out I'd be able to find a few things to help me survive this place, and then I'd be able to get out of here. I set off for the second floor.


	7. Blackout

This tape recorder's holding up pretty well. I reckon I'll be able to finish telling you the story up to me sitting here without it falling apart. It'll be time to go on soon, but somehow...somehow it's like I'm supposed to tell you all this first. Like there's gotta be a record, you know? Like people should know what I've been through, what's been done to me, and what I'm trying to achieve. Even if I fail. Maybe _especially_ if I fail. They'll be back soon, even if they don't find the other one, and then we'll head out, so I'd better hurry, I guess. Now where was I?

Oh yeah, the Lakeside Mall, southeast of the amusement park, leaving the Happy Burger again...

A sign near the entrance had complementary maps and pens, so I took one of each and found that my guess had been right, that there was a hallway behind the door I'd passed by on the second floor. So instead of going on in the direction of Fred's fashions, I headed right, deeper into the service area, and found a security office. This place had a handgun, some more handgun bullets, and an employee map of the place, which I traded for my old map pretty damn quick, believe you me. The map showed a hardware store back on the first floor, and a sports goods store up on the third. A basement door was also displayed on the first floor map, but the map of the basement level had been scrawled out with a marker pen. A comment was written next to the scrawl "way out? guess again!"

Well, that didn't sound too good, but the shutters had been closed as I came up to the second floor, especially the exit shutters. I tried not to think about what that meant, but couldn't get the plain fact outta my head, someone wanted to trap me in here. Worse yet, someone wanted to trap us both in there, me and that psychotic little girl who had lead me into this mess in the first place, like some blonde will'o-the-wisp. Suddenly that old British fairystory made a lot more sense. A traveller minding his own business gets lured off the path by a malicious spirit that wants him to get into more and more trouble, with no warning and through no fault of his own. Yeah, that was me alright. Damn! The little bitch! "This mall must be the trap," I said aloud to myself "she's probably brought other guys here before, and taken them to their deaths, maybe?" I turned the map over in my hands, the stomped-on bruising aching again at the movements, and there they were, bloody fingerprints on the back of the shiny card map. The handwriting was shaky, too, like he'd been... been, I dunno, scared out of his wits? Something like that.

I pocketed the map and went to the window. Nothing but rolling fog out there, weather even Lisa wouldn't love, and she loved all sorts. Once, when we were still young together, we got caught in the rain out in a park. I was pissed that our picnic had been ruined, that her makeup would get ruined and mess up all the effort she'd made just for me, just for our day out, and ruin the day for her. But she didn't care. She laughed at the rain, like it was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen, and in that moment... you know what? In that moment it really was the most amazing thing. It fell into her dark hair and shone in the light like crystals, the wind ruffled her top and messed with her skirt, and she laughed at it, laughed because of it. So we sat there together, enjoying the weather just for it _being_ weather, enjoying each other just because we _were_, you know? Not because we were anything in particular, just because we lived, a simple joy of existence. She looked up to me, sitting curled against me, the two of us sharing a blanket, she looked up and said...

"I'm always watching you!" I jerked out of my reverie at the voice, startled and shocked. It had seemed to come from everywhere at once, and at the same time, from nowhere at all. I scanned the room, saw nothing. The security monitor had its back to me, the room was empty, and the window was shut tight. What the hell? My own reflection showed me nothing, and the room was barren, a flaw in the glass looked something like a figure just on the other side of the desk. I wiped at it, just out of habit, and felt no difference in the texture. "Weird..." I muttered. The flaw shifted, making it look as though the figure had nodded. Oh shit. I turned around to face...whoever it was. Nothing. Still a barren security office, still with a switched-off monitor and a uniform locker. Nothing interesting. So what the hell was scaring me? A smudge on a window? I turned back, and saw that the flaw had moved. Now the flaw was reflected as being by the locker, a figure, female-looking, swaying from side to side, facing me. Starting to panic now, I quickly turned my head, looked over my shoulder. Still nothing. The locker door was firmly shut. Turned back to the window, I saw the flaw swaying faster, arms out to the side now, definitely a human figure, definitely female. She danced like a dervish, swaying and writhing, hips and chest pulsating, hair flying with the movement of her head. I was terrified to watch, but if I looked away she'd still be there _and I wouldn't see what she was doing_. Then BANG! she slammed the locker with her hips, and I heard it jump, saw it settle with my own eyes, not just the reflection. Quickly, back to the reflection, what the hell is she doing now?

BANG! again, and a third time bang. Her convulsions and pulsations were somewhere between violently sexual and insanely berserker, like she was trying to dance herself to death. And still BANG! at every chance she got. Her hips, her elbows, and now she was stepping and spinning, but still only visible in the window, still just a silhouette on a glass screen. Her hair whipped round with her movements, her hips convulsing like the throes of passion had possessed her, some insane incubus dancing in the dark, and still bang! and bang! and bang! One final crash, and she shrieked, right behind me, the sound of a thousand women's voices, all anguished, all young enough to fear and hurt, and old enough to know why, all shrieking out into the air behind me, and she rushed at me arms spread wide, hair flying out. I spun round to see her, having no more control over my body than a puppet over its own, and I saw...I saw all of them. Lisa, Kate, the women I'd slept with, the ones I'd always wanted. All in one body, all rushing towards me with such a fierce expression. They wanted to consume me, to devour me, to be possessed of me and to possess me, and against that ferocity the sun itself must surely fail. Her shrieks mixed with mine, I was sure she was gonna kill me there and then with the sheer power of her lust, and then her body hit mine, went somehow _into_ mine, the locker door exploded outward in a gush of ruby gore, I fell to the floor and the world went black.


	8. Lights Out

**A/N - Split for your pleasure. It just wasn't working in one go.**

When I woke up I panicked. It was so dark! Had I been unconscious through what was left of the day? Was it night time already? Why was the floor suddenly made of metal when it had been thick, soft carpet before? And what the hell was that dripping sound? I cursed at the darkness, and fumbled for my lighter. Better than nothing, I guess. I had quit years ago at Lisa's insistence, but kept the lighter, figuring you'd never know when a flame could come in handy. And, of course, being able to strike up a conversation with a pretty girl asking for a light never hurt, especially when that conversation lead to a _much_ better...friendship and the occasional motel visit. A very lucky lighter, this. If only it had shown me something a little nicer by its light this time around.

The source of the dripping sound was obvious immediately.The locker had spilled its contents when the door burst. Or, its content. A single mauled body. No, not mauled, mangled beyond all recognition. A mall security guard, judging by his uniform. The baton was blood-stained, the walkie radio emitting nothing but a faint hiss, and his face... oh dear God his face. What was left of it was alive with maggots and worms, the rest had simply been torn off. I grit my teeth and grabbed his radio and baton, they were no more use to him, poor bastard. A flashlight was stashed in his desk, much more reliable than a lighter for seeing my way. What to do with the body, though? I couldn't leave him just sprawled on the ground, it wouldn't be right. Gagging at the stench, I hefted his corpse into the seat at his desk, facing the blank monitor and the window that had showed me so much and so little. By the light of the flashlight, the window became a mirror, showing me nothing but the decay and ruin within. I turned to leave the room and was almost to the door when a harsh electric light flooded the room, and a loud grating of static burst in on my ears. The monitor was on.

I approached it slowly, trying to ignore the way the writhing static lit up the maggots in the dead man's face, making him grin in a grotesque imitation of life. Reaching the seat, I stood behind the seated corpse, trying to make sense of the screen. No picture, no sound, just that horrible static hiss. Nothing so far had made sense, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I checked the power cord and found it raggedly severed a couple of inches from the box. From the front, the dead man's contorted grin looked even worse, the worms within his eyes making him appear to stare at me, the flies crawling up his cheek broadening his grin. I'd rather see the tv screen, I thought. A screen that is on when it shouldn't be might show something even without a signal.

I wasn't disappointed. The static flickered once, twice, and resolved into an image. The first floor was shown quite clear. No other floors had a fountain in the middle, though why the water had gone dark I had no idea. A passageway lead straight out of the mall, it was obviously just a question of getting there. As I turned to leave, a movement on the screen caught my eye. The dark man again! That damn bastard was here too! My injured hand twitched at the thought of him and those god-damn boots. Maybe I could get even with him on the way out. Kill two birds with one bullet, that sorta thing. Crossing the screen, the man's image stopped suddenly, just beyond the fountain from wherever the camera would be. His head raised and tilted to one side, as though listening out. He seemed unnerved, almost fearful. Sure enough, not two seconds after he stopped to listen, the display window to the storefront behind him burst open, and three new monsters came at him from all sides, one from the window, and two from...someplace else. The camera view dropped to the ground and zoomed up to him in jagged, bouncing bursts of approach. He'd found a gun somewhere himself, it appeared. As he ducked a swipe from one monster, he shot it twice in the gut and stomped its head in when it hit the ground. Ducking again, he fell to the floor, and the camera hastened towards him. I caught a look of panic on his face as he rolled, raised his gun, and fired right at the camera. The image failed, imploded, and the monitor burst into flame violently.

The flies from the dead man's face flew into the warmth of the fire, dying horrible, painful deaths, the ceiling blackened but didn't catch, being metal. I decided it was time to leave and make my way out. Leaving the room I headed for the stairs again, but found my way up blocked by cargo crates. What the hell they were doing on an employee stairwell I don't know, but a blood trail running up from the first floor continued up the stairs where I couldn't go. A soft weeping came from the floor above, and somehow that scared me worst of all. Ok, I'll admit it, I was terrified. On legs that could barely support me, I ran like hell down the passageway, looking for the exit to the mall floor, the fire escape, _anything_ to get away from that dreadful sound. I guess you'll say I shoulda felt sorry for the poor girl, and yeah, I did. But as I stood at the stairs I had seen...I had seen bloody footprints splat splat splatting towards me. Not hurrying, not dawdling, just weeping their way towards me. No-one to cast them, though.I froze to the spot, I couldn't move at all no matter how much I wanted to, and still those prints had kept coming. I had stood there terrified as they came right up to me, and then turned off to head on down the stairs. It was a few minutes before I could move again, and when I did...yeah, I ran. I ran like a little girl from a mad dog. But really wouldn't you have done just that, too?

I must have been scared outta my mind, more than I'd've thought, cause somehow I got lost in the employee hallways, and at one point I thought I heard a girl yelling someplace else in the builing, and doors opening and closing just behind me. Every time I turned, though, it was like I'd just missed someone, or something. I remembered seeing the man in the coat on the monitor and could just imagine him messing with the doors, playing tapes of screaming girls, whatever else his twisted mind could bring out to put me out of my own mind. Getting lost in a labryinth like this with him around in the building was not an idea that I liked, so I grabbed my map, got my bearings, and ran out to the mall proper as fast as I could, the metal plates clanking horribly underfoot as I hurtled past the security office, the store rooms, and whatever else all those locked doors hid.

Eventually I made it out of the passageway and found myself in that yawning emptiness of the mall shopping floor, the heartbeat of our economy, someone once told me. Well, the heart didn't look none too healthy by the light of my flashlight. I went to the edge of the walkway, wanting to see if I could maybe drop down. Not a chance, the sheer drop was immense, any fall from even the second floor would cripple me for life if not kill me outright. Three monster corpses littered the ground down there, and I could just about make out the exit passageway. A fourth monster lay some distance from the rest, one of the devil dogs with a bloody mess where its head should have been. Lining up the angles, I saw that it would have been right in the camera's line of sight when it got killed, so why had I seen the other three and not the dog? Unless... Oh no... I couldn't believe it, still can't fathom it... The image on the screen had been the devil dog's view of the scene. I'd been watching through the eyes of a monster.


	9. Revelations and Disappearances

**A/N - The cat ran away with the crapper again. sob I'm so sorry!**

I sagged to the ground, collapsing to sit at the edge of the hole. Whatever balcony rail things shoulda been there to keep folks from falling to a broke neck seemed to have been broken themselves, and a hollow metal spike stuck outta the floor next to me. I could hear the fountain bubbling beneath me, feel the draught you always get in a big place like that, and felt like I just had to get the hell outta there right away, the whole place was nuts and I wanted nothing to do with it. Still, though, I couldn't get down by the stairway I'd come up, those footprints... Hell, no. Not that way. Anyway, the shutter that way was sealed up, so there was no way I could get through way even if the... whatever it had been, wasn't there. I got my map back out and started looking for another way down. An elevator or a moving walkway, maybe? I figured they had to get all those clothes and stuff up to the second floor _somehow_, maybe a cargo elevator? There was another hallway across the chasm, maybe the map had something on that...

I found a stairwell marked on the map, in the hallways I hadn't yet gotten to, so got up for that direction, carefully avoiding the rail. That thing could mess you up real good if you weren't careful. Every step to the hallway, though, was a nightmare to make. All those dead, empty store windows and cold shutter doors. The monsters I had seen on the screen were real enough, their bodies lay near the fountain as proof of that, and any one could come grabbing through the glass for me. If they were mad enough to go for the man in the coat, who was obviously evil enough to be one of them, they'd definitely go after me.

Remembering him reminded me of the woods, reminded me of Katie, reminded me of how my hand got stomped on for following her. I'd gotten so used to the dull ache that I barely noticed it anymore, but looking at my hand (my left one, the one I woulda worn a ring on if I'd been cissy enough to) in the flashlight's glare really shocked me. The fingers and wrist looked ok, but the main hand was going a nasty dark purple, and the skin itself was cracking slightly, sore and raw underneath. The fucking thing was dying on me, and the damage looked to be spreading up my fingers and wrist, I realised as I brought it closer to my face. _Hell with this,_ I thought, _I've gotta **do** something. What about that...that health drink? _Grabbing the bottle outta my jacket with my spare, injured, hand woulda been a joke, so, clipping the flashlight to my jacket chest pocket, I reached for it with my right, opened it with some difficulty, and gulped the whole lot down in one try. If you're gonna do something, you may as well go the whole hog, know what I'm sayin?

The shock and sudden pain from my injured hand drove me to my knees. It was...well, think what it's like when your foot falls asleep and you walk on it, all pins and needles. Then times that by about twenty. Yeah, you can imagine how much that shocked me. The pain, though, why would a _health drink_ hurt so damn bad? Every raw crack on my hand felt like it'd been run over with stinging nettles and set on fire. I braced myself against the ground with my whole hand, kept myself from falling, and cradled my injured hand against me, except...it wasn't injured anymore. The pain and buzz faded almost as soon as I fell, and as my head cleared again, I held out my left hand in front of me, in the lamplight, and saw it was as good as new. Just very faint lines, like old scars, where the skin had cracked, and I could deal with that. Maybe Katie wasn't so bad after all, I decided. When I next saw her I'd be much nicer, I told myself, I'd even call her Kate rather than Katie since it obviously meant so much to the poor unbalanced kid. Feeling much better about myself, I headed for the opposite hallway.

I can't tell ya how relieved I was when I got to the first floor again without running up against any devil dogs. I did see a shuffling thing at the end of the hallway, though, only enough to get a glimpse of a dark blue uniform, though. The radio I'd snagged from the dead mall cop went berserk, and the noise really got the thing's attention. It mighta been human shaped once, but it was massively deformed now, its face melted into itself, eyelids and all melted shut, and a short stick with some kinda spike in its hand. I had my hand on the stairwell door by then, though, and was able to just duck through and shut it behind me before the thing got more than two steps. I can still remember, even now, how relieved I was, even with my back hard up against the door to keep the thing from opening it again. I remember how it thumped against the door a couple times, and then shuffled off. The door handle didn't twitch once, though, the monsters were apparently big and strong, but still morons, kinda like some of the boys in the compulsory geography classes I teach back at Ashfield High. Or...taught, anyway. I don't even know what day it is now, or even what month, time goes in all kindsa weird ways here, they've probably fired me in my absence or something. Hell with it, back to the story, it'll be time soon.

Standing there, listening to it shuffle away, my radio no longer blaring static like it had done, I realised two things. One, that the radio noise and monsters were somehow linked, and two, that that monster was wearing a security guard uniform. Could that have been the guy in the locker? No, no, it couldn't have been. This place was hella weird, but the dead stayed dead, at least. I'd lugged his own bloody and maggot-ridden corpse back into his seat, I'd seen the bodies of the monsters (two of them security guard monsters, I now realised) laying lifeless on the ground. The dead stayed dead. I have to believe that, even now I have to believe that or I'll lose my mind. The thought of them picking themselves up and wandering around like zombies...no, no, I can't let myself even think that, especially with that bastard's corpse in Annie's Bar, so close to this burger bar by the bridge. The dead stay dead, remember that, Nate. Stay cool, you'll be ok. So... yeah... the monsters and the corpses are different, maybe whatever creates the monsters just takes... inspiration from what's going on? They don't start off life as real, sure, just figments in some demon's mind, but once they're created they're real and their own things. Their own individual lives. And deaths, mustn't forget that, monster deaths are very important. I'll get back to the story now so's you can understand why.

The stairwell was quiet. Too quiet. Even if I'd wanted to go up to the third floor, more packing crates blocked the way (where the hell do all these things come from?) so the only way was down. I checked my flashlight, (still strong) checked the load of the handgun, (fully loaded, a ten round clip) and headed down to the first floor. Still no devil dogs. I closed the door behind me as quiet as I could, no sense in letting anything know I was there. I headed for the main plaza and noticed as I walked that I could hear voices up ahead. Angry voices, too, what the hell? I turned off my flashlight and crept up to the pizza parlor the voices were coming from. Opening the door silently took all my concentration, so the first thing I heard when I slipped in was a girl's voice in plaintive mid-sentence

"...alone? Just.. please! I don't want to see this place anymore, I just wanna... Just let me _go_, let me be"

Was someone holding her prisoner? It wasn't Katie's voice, this one was older, richer. I edged around a corner and saw into the parlor. The place looked like a bomb had gone off, tables smashed across the room, the mirror behind the serving bar was cracked in so many places it barely showed anything back to you, and the wine bottles made into candle holders were more destroyed than standing. On a few tables, though, they stood lit, as though someone had decided that the apocalypse was just the right time for a romantic dinner for two. I, the gatecrasher, stood staring like some slack-jawed idiot at the two people sat at a rounded table in the centre of the parlor, within the circle of candlelight. The speaker was a young woman, about 19 or so, with dark hair and a light polo-neck sweater. The person she was berating, and my fists twitched at the sight of him, sitting there smoking without a care in the world, holding this poor young thing against her will, was the man in the coat. Before I could move, she spoke again.

"Please? I... I know you say you wanna help me and I want to believe you. I just... no! No, you don't want to help me, nobody does! You men, you're all the same, you only want one thing. Go ahead, say it!" she jeered at him, hands waving wildly, "say you want to help me. Say you'll take care of me, look after me like nobody else would. Tell me you think you can save me? Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all my pain?" The man on the other side of the table buried his face in his hands. "I thought so," she sneered, "you don't want to save my life, you couldn't even if you did. You only want me for that" The man in the coat raised his head slowly.

"What have I ever done," he asked real soft "to make you think that? When did I even lay a hand on you? Or even enter your room? I'm not like him. You know that. Or, you should by now, anyway." Damn, this guy was good. For a second even I thought he didn't want to get in on a piece of that. I guess I haven't been describing her too well, but this girl... this girl was really somethin else. You wouldn't see it unless it was just the right light, but the way her face went, the tits hidden under that sweater... Man, and I bet she had killer legs.

"You left me alone there" she answered "all alone in that terrible place. I know what's out there, I put my head out the door sometimes and I can see them. They haven't come for me yet, but they will. I know it, and when they do, you'll let them, won't you! I know you will. Everyone thinks I deserve it, everyone knows what I'm like! They'll come and they'll... they'll do that to me, and you'll let them! Please, just let me go! Leave me alone and let me go!" He shook his head no, and took a pull at a cigarette. They sat there in the light, looking for all the world like an angel and a devil arguing over the bill in the restaurant at the end of the earth. She seemed to come to a decision, and spoke again her tone suddenly different, sultry and seductive. She leant across the table to him, back arched, licking her lips, and put a hand on his arm.

"If you promised you'd let me go, I could be...good for you. Hmm? Come on, you know it's what you're really wanting." She tilted her head to the side coyly, exposing her throat, pushing out her chest, showing off all she had. "And then you'd get what you want, and you could just...toss me away..." a light, dismissive flick of the wrist with her free hand, as though flicking away a used up piece of trash. "We'd both be happy," she went on, "don't you want me to be happy?" He kept his gaze on the table in front of him, not even looking at her face, at her chest, and spoke at the oak wood.

"More than you know. I want you to be happy. But what you're trying to persuade me of... no..." she slid her hand upwards from his arm, trailing her fingertips over his chest and raising his head by his jaw, forcing him to look her at her.

"Aww, come on now," she told him, "come on, I don't look that bad, do I? Nobody else ever said I was too ugly for it." He swallowed hard, and reaching out, touched her face all gentle-like. She took the hand on her face into her own, held it against her cheek and nestled into it.

"No, you're not... you're not ugly, you know that. But I..." he broke off, looked away. I was about ready to give him an Emmy for this performance, I can tell ya. She wasn't convinced he wasn't interested, though, and started gently suckling on a finger. She musta been good, his eyes drooped closed and he bent his head to the table again.

"Aww, come on and look at me, then," she said teasingly, "Now, how are you gonna look out for me and take care of me if you've got your eyes closed, huh?" Then he did something real odd. He yanked his hand back to himself and stood up so fast his chair fell over and the table rattled.

"No! I won't let this happen!" Loud and clear, his voice rang out through the deserted room. She shrank back, terrified and whimpering. His face fell at the sight and when he stepped forward to speak again, she got up herself and backed off, her purple pants almost a blood-red in the candle-light.

"I... I'm sorry.." she babbled "I'm sorry. I've been bad, I didn't mean to be bad, oh please don't hurt me, please!" He raised a hand, palm outwards, was about to speak to calm her, but I couldn't let him. Whatever this girl wanted, this bastard had hurt me, tried to keep me from Katie, and now he was scaring her. I squeezed the trigger twice and two puffs of blood flew up from his shoulder. The girl screamed and almost fell over herself backing away so fast. They both turned to me, and I came out of the shadows. His eyes, those damn dark eyes, widened in shock and surprise.

"You? You're here?" I nodded, grinning quietly, and offered the girl my best smile. She wasn't in any fit state to appreciate it, though, gibbering like a scared little kid in a haunted house. He reached for his shoulder, felt the wound, his hand coming away bloody. I squeezed the trigger again, and again, his chest puffed red twice and he staggered back against the counter, slumped down onto the ground. The girl was crying now, the shots had been pretty damn loud and she didn't seem like the most together kid to start with. He fingered the wounds, stared bemused at the blood, and saw me approaching the girl, to comfort her, give her a kiss and a cuddle. Cute little figure like that, maybe even a bit more, I thought.

"Run!" a hoarse whisper from the floor. "Get out of here, now! Don't let him get close to you. He'll..." he broke off, coughing, "he'll only want...one thing..." That got her attention. She stared right at me, seemed to see me properly for the first time, then turned and ran for her life, bare feet flapping against the metal tiles, still sobbing as she went. I chased after her, but lost her before I got to the window she'd climbed out of, and stood staring at her disappear into the darkness.

"You bastard!" I roared at the roof. "You mother-loving sonova**whore**! You scared her away!" I spun round, and raised the gun again "This time I'm aiming for the head, you little shit!" Except I couldn't, he'd gone. A bloody trail lead from where he'd been sitting to the door to the kitchen, a hand print on the doorframe where he'd pulled himself through, and then... an empty kitchen. I turned my flashlight back on, full beam, and searched the kitchen from top to bottom, even inside all the cupboards and ovens. Nothing. And the doors to the freezers were locked. Going back to the door, I felt my shoes stick to the floor, and trained my flashlight down. Some kinda symbol was drawn on the tiled floor in blood, a six-sided square with one of them Jew stars inside, and another Jew star inside _that_. On each corner of the six-sided square was a circle, and, even though it was a quick smear of blood with just a few lines, the image seemed to pulse and writhe as though there were far too many lines within the stars. Just looking at it gave me a headache. Cursing the man in the coat and all Jew-loving sonsawhores, I left the pizza parlor and headed for the plaza with the dark fountain.


	10. Headline News

**A/N - I wonder what you'll all make of this, I really really do...**

The air was cold and clear, but not clean. A bitter, sour smell hung in it, and got stronger and nastier the closer I got to the center of the plaza. My flashlight shone on the fountain, the source of the stench. As I approached it, the smell got almost too much to bear, the air got warmer and more moist, and I could see why the fountain had been dark on the black and white monitor. The thing was spewing blood out into the pool! Things were floating in there, too, an arm, a foot, what looked like someone's insides. I caught a glimpse, just a glimpse, of a child's forearm, tiny fingers with one of those stupid pink wristwatches. It bobbed on the surface, and I saw the second hand ticking quietly to itself, calmly measuring out the time its owner didn't have. And then it sank.

Footsteps behind me. Kate again, hand in hand with that other girl! Neither one saw me until they got closer to the fountain, and neither looked pleased to see me when they did.Kate spoke, the other one stayed silent.

"So you're still here. Having fun? You scared her," gesturing to the girl in the light top, "half to death, you know."

I nodded, wondering where she was going with all this. The mall was deserted and bloody monsters lay dead at our feet, but she wanted to talk about feelings. Just like a woman.

"We're getting the hell out of here." she continued. "I guess you'll want to do the same, but stay away from us, ok?" She pulled my gun out from the waistband of her skirt and gestured at me. She'd changed, I noticed, not just from her old clothes into the one I left at Fred's Fashions, I noticed. Pale and light, it flapped round her legs in the draft from the exit hallway, but I couldn't find the pleasure in that which I'd expected. I couldn't look away from her eyes, though I didn't want to look at them in the first place, either. Clear as ever, they shone out from her face fierce and hard. Something had happened since she'd last seen me, and if she pulled the trigger on me, she wouldn't miss. I pulled out the handgun I'd found and made the same motion to her.

"Ok, you wanna play cowboys, kid? We can do that. Except this time I'm armed, too. You aint got the advantage over me no more. I've already used this once, your new friend can tell ya how I took out the guy holding her prisoner" I waved the gun at the other girl, who yelped and hid behind Kate. Kate looked confused, but only for a split second, and then it was gone again, her face showing nothing she didn't want it to. Little ice-bitch like her probably had years of experience in fucking with men's heads, I figured, and she didn't want me to get any control over the situation again. Hell with that.

She rolled her eyes at me, you know the way kids her age get. Think they know everything and can just mouth off at ya.

"Look. Dick. We just wanna get outta here, ok? Now, I dunno what it is you're wanting, but I'm tired and wanna go home. I'm tired of devil dogs that try to eat you alive, I'm tired of insane burger boys who vanish into thin air, I'm tired of security guards who turn out to be monsters, and, dick, most of all I'm tired of you. Take your ego and shove it, cause I'm done worrying about you."

With that, she turned her back on me and started toward the exit hallway, her long loose hair flying out behind her on the incoming draft. I ran to catch up to her, and was halfway to her when something slid out from under my foot and made me fall real heavy on the metal ground, making me yell out in pain and shock. I guess she wasn't quite done worrying with me after all, cause she spun round, revolver raised, to see what had happened to me or... in that place, what had attacked me.

"Nathan! You ok?" She hurried over to me, the other girl had yelled at my yell and now stood there with her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed in shock.

"Yeah, kid, thanks. I'm ok." I grumbled, embarrassed. "I guess I just slipped up on..." I felt underneath me. "On a newspaper? What the..?"

In the weirdness of it, I guess we both forgot our grudges. She reached down, took my hand (no longer injured, thank God) and helped me up, then crouched down next to me, to read the paper. A big photo of some spotty kid took up most of the front page, with the headline "LOCAL STUDENT MISSING, SUICIDE SUSPECTED" underneath. Kate took a sharp breath, shocked at something, and stood up, holding the paper for me to see.

"Nathan, look! This is the burger boy! He's the one that I saw!" The paper was dated five years ago, I saw, which meant that the boy would now be a man would no longer be working at Happy Burger. I pointed at the date and Kate went white.

"So he's been stuck here? All this time? But he hasn't aged at all! Even the grease and burger blood on his clothes were fresh!" She was beginning to panic, and I felt the same. If he had been here for five years since disappearing, would we ever get out?

"Local student Jeff Brookman vanished without a trace during his shift in the newly-opened Lakeside Mall here in Silent Hill," Kate read aloud, "Co-workers said that he had been looking very depressed on entering the kitchens and had been lethargic, bitter and despairing throughout his first hour, prompting his shift manager to banish him to the back of the kitchens, out of sight of the customers. 'I told him we couldn't look ourselves in the mirror if we at Happy Burger were making our customers unhappy just by the sight of us,' Pam Estel, graveyard shift manager, told the Silent Hill Gazette, continuing 'I told him that I knew this isn't the best of jobs, especially for a bright young man like him, but that he had to smarten up. That's when he told me he'd flunked all his SATs. Girl trouble, he said. He was real cut up about it. After that, it was more a mutual agreement that he'd stay in the back for the rest of the night. He agreed that it might help him decide what to do from here on out. I hope he's ok, though, he was real cut up about it.' Ms Estel has since quit the Happy Burger chain in search of a more productive and humane employer, an anonymous source told the Silent Hill Gazette."

Kate looked up from the paper and into my eyes. Such eyes! I swear she could see right through me and see... but nah, that's crazy.

"There's more about his mom and his brothers, but it's not readable," she said, "It's as if the words just don't want to be read." I craned over her shoulder to try to read what the hell she was talking about, and couldn't read jack squat myself. Somehow it was like the words were fine when you looked at them outta the corner of your eye, but if you looked straight at them they just formed into blocks of black or ran away in all different directions. Why that scared me, standing alone with a young girl in a demon mall with undead dogs and evil security guards after us, I don't know. But somehow that scared me most of all. Something powerful enough to mess with both our minds and eyes was one thing, but something so malicious as to block us out from reading the whole thing about the kid's life and presumed death... That was something really worrying.

"He seemed real cut up about it..." I muttered, trying to ignore the stench from the fountain behind us. "Real cut up...Hey kid, pipe down, wouldjah?" This last was to the girl in the light top, who was beginning to whimper again, but getting louder and more hysterical as she went on. Girls have such pretty voices, why do they gotta spoil it by crying so often? Such a nasty sound. She didn't shut up, though, and when I turned to yell at her, the words dried up in my throat. Standing there, she looked like fear incarnate, I've never seen anyone so scared. Well, I hadn't then, anyways. Gibbering, she pointed at the fountain, looking just like some psychadelic sculpture. A study in terror, and it was infectious. My own heart began to beat faster, my skin crawled as I realised that the stench had changed, that the liquid bubbling was making thicker, more gloopy sounds. I grabbed Kate's shoulder, to get her attention, but she was already turned toward the fountain, eyes wide, jaw slack. As I turned, I saw the other girl shriek and flee outta the mall through the hallway. The door slammed behind her, though she hadn't touched it, and the bloody apparition that had risen from the fountain pool held its gushing wrists out to us plaintively, its Happy Burger uniform covered with blood, entrails hanging off its shoulders. It spoke, and more blood fell from its mouth, slopping over the claws that shoulda been fingers. It spoke, and I saw the gashes across its throat where it had been too slow for the devil dogs. It spoke, and a nailed nightstick fell from its battered chest. It spoke, and the walls closed in, trapping the two of us in with this abomination of desolation.

It spoke, and the world ended with every word.

"I'm **very** cut up about it"

**A/N - Yeah, it's time for the first boss fight. Too bad they've got such crappy weapons, huh? This could end up as a very short story for someone, I guess. R&R, please? Thanks.**


	11. Pop Quiz

I backed off real quick, gun raised.

"Who... what the hell are you?" I demanded.

"You need to pay more attention to the headlines, Mr Crawley" sneered the thing in the pool. "Or maybe just to your students!"

That's when it hit me. Jeff Brookman, the student who'd been borderline for all the time I taught in Brahms, the next town over from here. That had been five years ago. Hell of a commute, but the money had been worth it. Almost. It was the extra perks that had kept my interest, really. Extracurricular, you might say. This kid, though, he'd been something else. It wasn't until after he dropped out that I found out he'd needed the good grades from my class to stay in school. I hadn't even been paying attention when I marked him down, I had been too busy that weekend to really try, so I just scribbled the grade down and headed out to meet Tina at the restaurant. That was back when I'd been staying in an apartment out there for a few weeks at a time, before Lisa got all paranoid.

The realization hit deep and I fell to my knees. I'd flunked the kid, and he'd failed and dropped out because of it, and ended up here, at the Happy Burger. Outta the corner of my eye, I could see him walking towards me, slopping hot blood over the ground as he walked.

"That's right, you remember me now, right? I'm the kid you flunked when all I needed to stay in school was a good mark from you. I was a good student! I cared about my grades! And you shot that all to hell!"

"Leave him alone!" What? Katie defending me? Why? "Even if he did flunk you, he didn't do this to you!" Why would she defend me? I still don't understand it, even now. I musta scared the hell outta her back there in the woods, and she damn near killed me twice, so why would she care what this thing did to me?

"Leave him alone?" Jeff again, mocking her. "When he's been so alone all this time? No, I want him to feel what I feel. What I've felt every stinking day since I came to this place. It's all his fault, and you don't know anything about this, little pretty and popular schoolgirl! I tried to fight it, tried to make it out alive. You can see for yourself how they got me when I was too slow, or ran out of ammo." I stared at the ground, waiting for it to strike, but it didn't. Not yet. I guess it wanted me to suffer outta guilt before killing me outright.

"I made it pretty far." Jeff was reminiscing now, telling us how he got to be this... monster... "But each time I thought I was gonna make it, another bastard came up on me. Even that bastard in the coat wouldn't help me. Yeah, he said he couldn't, that he was stuck here just like me, but I know he coulda helped me if he'd wanted to. He just didn't care. So I came back here. Picked up the knife. Ended my misery."

I had to laugh at that.

"Yeah, you look so much happier now."

"Shut up, bastard!" It spun and kicked me in the gut, knocking me over. "I should have died. I should be in paradise. Didn't matter to me if it was the one the outside churches talked about or the one the Order was always yelling about, just so long as it wasn't this. Everything went dark and cold, all my blood ran out, and then I woke up here again. Still bleeding, still in pain. I'm still food for those damn things, and I'm more miserable than ever." Wrists still gushing blood, it turned to me. I could see its head twitching faster and faster, its claws lengthened, and suddenly it was grown to twice my size, and towered over us. It bared its teeth, sharp and ready, claws running red with its own blood.

"But you know what they say," it growled, "misery loves company. You'll stay here with me forever."

_It's finished, Crawley. You're finished, old man, and you know it._

The thought penetrated my brain like a railroad spike through the skull. The pain knocked me askew again, and as I knelt there cradling my head, I saw black shadows racing across the ground, smelt more stench from the fountain pool as it bubbled more violently than before.

I don't remember much of that, my mind was a real mess, and I couldn't think straight at all, what with the terrified thoughts and the agony in my head. I could see Kate sunk to the floor, too. Her long legs curled under her, she slumped forward, braced against the ground, like some sorority kid hurling at a kegger.

If only it'd been that. A drink or a drunk. I knew she felt it too, this pain, like a cold spear through the mind. She breathed heavily, I could just about make her out through my blurred vision, like it was taking everything she had to just stay up from collapsing forever. She raised her head up, and in that terrible place she looked like a saint, a Lady Saint, a Saint Lady, something holy. Her blonde hair framed her face like a halo and her eyes, held open with agonising effort, still saw so much, still saw so clearly.

"Nathan!" she yelled across to me, as I clutching my own head under a fresh wave of pain. "Nathan it's in our heads! It wants us to give up!"

_We can't win, kid. He'll take us to pieces.. he'll... I'll... _

I fell on my side, my vision blurring, despairing thoughts running riot. I could smell Jeff standing over me. Gloating. The bastard.

Kate, though, Kate pulled through like you wouldn't believe. She pushed herself up to kneeling from her hurling pose, overbalanced, and fell back to leaning backwards across her boots, body arched outwards. She raised her gun up and aimed, hand waving like it'd be a miracle to hit the broad side of a barn.

_You won't hit it, kid. Nice try, but there's no way, there's no ammo. It's already dead._

She pulled the trigger, and the thing shrieked, clutching at its throat. The noise in my mind vanished suddenly, and Kate pulled the trigger again, but no effect. She didn't seem fazed, though, and got up yelling at me fiercely, like some god-damn valkyrie or amazon.

"Nathan! Get up, or we'll both die!" I groaned, my head felt like it was gonna split open. I rolled to my side, and fired at the thing, though the gun weighed twice as much as my arm. The bullet hit thing's bloody torn chest and it screamed again. It swiped at me. He swiped at me. Old Jeff, destined for better things if he'd been smarter, with his drive he coulda had his pick. Mr Ivy League woulda-been, he leant down and tried to eviscerate me with claws that once were hands that once wrote essays, played football, fooled around with young cheerleaders, buried a...

I rolled outta the way and got up. Not this time, kid. Recess is done. Circling around, I moved away so I had my back to the only solid object in the room, the massive bloody fountain, my full attention on the monster before me, the woulda-been star student, if only he'd had the smarts to go with his ambition and drive. A fallen star now, burning cold and alone forever.

"You can't kill me!" he shrieked, "I'm already dead! You'll never leave here! It's hopeless, give up!" The tip of a claw knocked me on a second strike. Knocked me back and against the fountain. I propped myself up on the pool, steadied myself. Suddenly I felt hot clammy hands grab onto me and, yeah, I screamed. The child's hand, with the small pink wristwatch on it, had latched on to my wrist.

The hand with a forearm with a wristwatch.

The little girl's arm. The arm with no owner.

A pair of arms, steaming wet and slender, wrapped themselves around me. The woman they belonged to pulled herself in close to me, I felt the hot, firm mounds of her chest pressing hard against my back, and suddenly her mouth was on my ear, a wet and passionate kiss that sank hard white teeth into the lobe, drawing my blood, mixing it with her own.

I yelled out and hit out behind me. She laughed sultry in my ear as she fell back, the child's arm fell off and into the pool with a horrible 'plop!'. I turned to face the new threat, and my heart stopped inside me. I stood and stared amazed as I saw the woman in the pool, beckoning me to join her like a lover to a bathtub, her other hand jammed between her legs, fingers writhing there. Tina, my girl from the library back in Brahms. Tina, who I'd spent so much happy time with. Tina, who had up and vanished in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but a lingering scent of her body, its juices, and that special perfume she'd had imported down from Jew York. She had sent me a postcard from there once, but I'd destroyed it as soon as I'd read it. Lisa wouldn't have understood, you know women.

Jeff leered behind me. "I think she likes you, Mr Crawley. Say, have you tried it wet yet?" An unearthly shriek as Kate shot him again. The sound brought me back to the then and there, and I raised my own gun, fired at the 'woman's heart. She shrieked my name (ah God, the memories!) and fell back into the pool, disappeared beneath the surface.

The monster lurched to Kate, leering at her. She fired three shots from the revolver, two went wild, and one just clean bounced off it. She panicked, kept squeezing the trigger. Probably didn't even hear the dry clicks from the empty chambers. It was almost on her, steam from the hot blood rising off it like smoke from a doused fire. It licked its lips and brought the weeping wrists down towards her, to hold her close, to make her his bitch, to have his way with her just like that girl I found him with in the locker rooms that time. Sweet little Suzy, 13 years and completely at his mercy, what little mercy a little girl can expect from a muscle-bound 18-year-old, anyway. Oh God, the memories...

My heart blazed in fury. He'd gotten away with it that time, at least as far as the school board was concerned, but even the beating I gave him wouldn't wipe out what had happened to that little girl, nor would the time I spent trying to help her get over it. Not again. Not with Katie, who had stood up for me when she had no reason in the whole world to do so. "You bastard!" I yelled. "Let us alone!" A shot into the creature's heart, another shriek from those awful lips, monstrous music making me so glad. A shot into its throat, and it staggered back. Kate blinked, fumbled in her pockets, and reloaded. The monster turned to face both of us, and standing with our backs to the pool, we faced him together. Do or die.

"You can fuck with our minds all you like, but you bleed just like us" she stated flatly, raising her gun. A shot into its eye and it stumbled back, screaming.

I raised my own gun "I'm getting the fuck outta here, Brookman, and you're not gonna stop me." And as I fired, Kate did the same, the shots rang out dull and flat in the closed-in space, but the lead flew strong and true.

The shots tore into Jeff's throat, and an agonised swipe of his claws ran across Kate's jacket, ripping it wide open. She gasped and grimaced at the line of blood that sprung up where it ripped her skin, but stood her ground. Good kid. My second shot hit the thing's shoulder, and bounced off harmlessly. Damn thing.

The monster was blinded now, swaying slow and heavy. Maybe with one last shot... Both my gun and Kate's trained on the most wounded part of the thing, the throat. We looked each other in the eye. She didn't trust me, and sure as hell didn't like me, and I wasn't so sure she wanted me to survive, myself. But we had to kill it together, or die together. Easy choice.

"Now" I said "Let's kill the bastard"

"Go for the throat" she agreed.

A rain of bullets as we emptied our guns into the thing's throat. The hot lead ripped the flesh from the throat and broke through the back of the thing's neck, and the head tore off its shoulders. The creature fell forward to its knees, forcing us to jump outta the way. That or be flattened by the thing we'd just defeated. From its knees, it collapsed forward into the fountain with a crash, its massive shoulders breaking the marble. The head fell behind its feet, the broken fountain spurted up in to the air, a great plume of...

Water?

We turned slowly, gaping like moonstruck idiots. The mall was restored. Just as it had been when we entered it. Almost completely normal, though still abandoned, still with the marks of the fired cleaning crew. The fountain sparkled clear water into the air from a complete spout, and the only real sign of blood was a trail of footprints leading out of the exit hallway, the girl in the white top. She was somewhere out there. For a second, I forgot how much I'd wanted her on seeing her with the bastard in the coat, and worried for her. Would she survive out there? I'd have to check. But first, something else demanded my attention.

A small doll lay on the seating ring around the fountain pool. We approached it silently, guns at the ready, hearts still pounding. The doll was like an action figure, a six inch male in white and red uniform.

"Don't touch it!" I hissed as Kate leant in closer. She nodded, but flipped it over with her gun anyway. Curiosity and disobedience, Woman's greatest sins. From the action figure's head, Jeff's hopeless face stared up at the roof, the fountain mist making his glazed, open eyes appear to cry, just like that night on the field. As we watched, the eyes sank into the waxen skin, the hands turned to claws, and the neck split slowly in two, releasing the head, which rolled into the pool. For a split second, the water turned red, and then cleared again. The doll had crumbled into dust, and the head, rather than floating to the surface, dissolved and spread into the pool.

"Poor bastard" I muttered. "I knew he needed help with his grades, and the other teachers said he needed something more, but this..." I shrugged helplessly. "I... I mean... What could I have done? I was... I didn't..."

I stepped back, took a deep breath. Take control of yourself, old man. She'll lose all respect for you if you break down here.

"Fuck it, I don't have to explain myself. This place is wrong, I'm getting the fuck outta here. You coming, kid?"  
I didn't stand there, waiting for a response, but ran to the door, along the hallway, and out of the mall, back into the fog. The girl in the top was out there somewhere, and I might be able to help her before I started really trying to find the way home.

**A/N - Some bits of this chapter surprised me. I hadn't known these bits about Nathan, and certainly not about Jeff. Whew! What do you all think?**

**Gaia - You rule. Your recommendations help so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.  
**

**MLS - Many thanks for the review, it's always good to hear what people think of my little stories, especially when it's the opinion of writers as good as yourself. **


	12. Reverie

Outside again, horribly outside. That's the fucked-up thing about this place. When you're inside, you're hemmed in on all sides, trapped in a mess of filth and grime with such ugly bloody creatures you couldn't begin to... Well, I guess that's the point, really, isn't it? Beyond your nightmares and all that. I guess the school really taught me that. Dunno really if I'll ever be able to walk into a classroom again after that. God help me, I don't know how I'd survive outside this place, but I can't go on staying in here. One way or the other, whatever's outside this town, I have to get out. One way or the other. Maybe I shoulda listened to that Dark Man, that damn bastard. Whatever else you can say about him, at least he tried to warn me. Again and again. But we'll get to that.

Outside again, and I noticed a trail of blood right next to where I had stopped running. It didn't start there, but ended there, as though the object had simply... what? Been picked up, maybe, or flown away? A bloodied bird, dragging its way along, suddenly taking flight? Yeah, old man. And I'm the King of Sweden. Since it hadn't gone anywhere I could follow, even in my mind, I headed to where it had begun. Off to my right, around the corner of the building, that's where it had come from, so I followed.

Further along the building, and it began, in a massive pool of blood, not fresh, but still wet, still warm. And smeared up the wall in drops and drags. Down the wall, perhaps? If you drop a ripped bag of flour off the side of a building, you get pancake-spatter on whoever's looking out a window it passes. We learnt that one hot July afternoon, me and the kids. Subbing for the science teacher's good fun when the physics work is that easy, not to mention that messy. We had great fun up on the roof that day, even when we almost killed the deputy principle. She was cool about it, though I got my nuts pretty chewed over letting that many kids up there at a time, it all worked out. That was back in Ashfield, after leaving the Brahms post. Even Laura, the bratty little kid who always gave me hell when she was in a class with me, let up for a bit on that time. I coulda sworn there was a smile on her little face when her... I guess you'd call him 'legal guardian'... Sunderland picked her up at the end of the day. Yeah, I watched the kids go home, leave the school. Who wouldn't? They're leaving one world for another, and that's always when they're in the most danger, in the crossover.

We never played pancake-gravity with blood, though. Someone else had thought that one up all themselves. Going by my map, I was just outside the office of the security guard I'd found dead, up on the second floor. Which was where the spatter started, where I'd been standing when that... that thing thumped into me and the world went dark. Oh yeah, that was a very dark time in all ways, class. The window had been intact when I'd been up there, though, so it musta been broken afterwards. Maybe that thing I'd heard in the passageways with me. God, that still gave me the creeps, I tell ya. Being alone with the corpse was bad enough, but at least it was definitely dead, and the dead have the decency to stay dead. Being alone with sounds in the darkness, though... That's the trouble with the dark, or fearing it, anyway. That constant fear that something's always near. Never being able to see it, it's always just outta reach, always on the very edge of your flashlight beam, dancing away when you turn to catch it out. Maybe that's just as well, really, would I be able to see that face without dying? Would the object of fear not be so much worse than the fear itself that you'd rather claw your eyes out than see its true face, even for a second, even if it were the last thing you'd ever see? My father always told me its best to face your fears, that a man must always face his fears, and face his demons down. The old buzzard had never been on vacation here, though, I'll bet.

The blood-spatter, though, told me nothing more than the end of the trail. At some stage something terrible and bloody had burst through the window, crawled along, and taken flight. The anti-phoenix, death born of life, terror and despair born of... I don't dare imagine. I followed it as far as its end, and left its bloody path for the exit from the mall. Kate, the blonde kid I'd followed into this whole mess, hadn't followed me out. Before, I woulda gone back, hunted for her, but the other kid had looked so terrified last I saw her, and now she was out here, barefoot and alone. She reminded me more and more of the little kid in the locker room, little Suzy, so scared and alone, so lost. I'd been too late to save Suzy from the worst, though I'd done what I could to level things out, but maybe this time... Maybe this time the whole mess could be avoided. I've got no savior complex, me, I'm a humble man, but when you can do something to keep evil things from happening... what kinda man are you if you don't do them?

So I set off to follow her. Trying to think. The fog has that in its favor, at least, it's damn cold. Perks your mind up somewhat, so at least you're awake enough to think, even if the thoughts are... cloudy sometimes. Like just now outside this burger joint. What happened at Annie's Bar was real enough, I still have the pool cue I took from there as a weapon. But the black cats I've been seeing all over the place? It's just too fucked up. I mean, nothing moves in this place except monsters and the few people here running from them, like me and Katey. But every now and again, when something really bad's just gone down, if you look real close at the place, you can always see at least two of them. Just sitting there staring. I tell ya, nothing stares half so well as a cat does. Creepy fucking things, too, if you walk towards them they just vanish, like a Cheshire cat, if you walk away, they sometimes follow you, but without moving. I saw a corpse of one once, looked like it had been just... ripped apart. Maybe they don't play well with others. Or maybe I'm going crazy.

At that stage, though, back at the mall, all I could think of was getting to the girl before something got to her. So I followed the main road, figuring she'd head back to town, and that meant going through the amusement park.

Lakeside amusement park. Mascot, Robbie the Rabbit. Most popular ride... the carousel.

Lakeside, the unhappiest place on earth.

**A/N - Yeah, another filler, but it'll get better once we hit the amusement park. Come on, you didn't think a fic inspired by SH3 wouldn't have the park?**

** Raptor Jesus - Thanks for the review. Shortness of sentences etc is mostly down to the fact that he's narrating it himself, but I'll bear the suggestion in mind. I see you changed your sn etc, does that mean you didn't get my email?  
**

**GLBT - Thanks so much for the raving reviews. It's great to know you really enjoy my stuff.**

**MLS - Coming from you, that's a great compliment. You really made my day with that comment.**

**Gaia - Special thanks to you for your beta-ing. You still rock. **


	13. Someone Else's Nightmare

The walk up from the mall to the amusement park is a kinda weird thing, until you figure out the way the two places work together, or until a friend tells ya, like one of mine did. First time I've ever been to this town, and I knew all there was to know about the park before even setting foot in it. People who wanna spend money can be persuaded to spend just that little bit more than they mighta done otherwise, and if you can throw in some kinda money-off thing to make it seem that much more of a good idea, so much the better. Of course, the fact that the mall's employees get a discount at the park and visey voicey doesn't hurt nothing neither. So they're onto a pretty good thing there, I reckon. Makes it a bit of a bitch to get back to town from the mall, though, cause you gotta take the path through the park whether you like it or not. They cage off most things, so's anyone can always get back home from late-night shopping, but there's still something kinda creepy about walking through the deserted park at night. Specially if you see those damn bunnies walkin round making sure no-one's messing with the rides or the cash tills. A six-foot pink bunny, who's stupid idea was that for a park mascot? Might as well have a six-foot black rat with satellite-dish ears and white gloves. Now _there's_ a dumb idea... hope no-one else thinks of it.

Walking up took about half an hour. I think. My watch broke back in the woods not long after I crossed that damn river, so I think it took about half an hour. Maybe longer, time's... kinda weird here. In the fog, by myself, that wasn't a great trip, I can tell ya. The area around there is mostly trees and grass, and every so often a rustling of footsteps on dead leaves made me think I'd found the girl, but nothing was there when I looked. More nothing than you'd expect, really, like something had just hidden itself in plain sight. Or something. So it was a spooked and tired Nathan Crawley who turned up at the Lakside Amusement park main gates, hoping against hope not to see any damn pink bunnies. My wish was almost granted. Almost.

Laying on the floor were several monster bodies. A massive fleshy thing with 'arms' reaching down to its feet, a mashed up face with no eyes but a big mouth, and strangely human legs in some kind of apron. Devil dogs, too, I noticed, but not the ones that had chased me into the mall. I crouched down to look closer at the corpse. Definitely dead. Deader than the undead version I could imagine. Looked like someone had run a black lab dog through a circular saw (or, rather, other way round) then bandaged the body back up together, but left the head split open. The two halves seemed to have gotten themselves some nasty fangs, though, and I felt sorry for whoever they'd managed to chomp on before those bullet holes in the bandaging had finally put the monstrosity to rest. A nightmare, sure, but somehow not my nightmare.

I carried on walking, with the sensation that I wasn't walking alone. Not a fear of the dark, it was still daylight. Or daylight again. Or some damn thing, the mist was there and it weren't dark, you get the idea. The pink bunnies turned up as well. Dead and done for, these ones, with red stains around the mouth. Had they attacked my predecessor, too? Weird feeling, I was sure I was walking through someone else's nightmare. But, a part of the nightmare that was done with, like a toy store after closing, all the bits and gadgets are still there, still just about warm from being played with and entertaining not four hours ago, but with a definite 'curtain down' feel, like walking through Macbeth's castle just after the last battle's lost and won, and everyone's gone but the dead.

So I walked on through the finished nightmare, just a passing-through for me, and wondered why I hadn't taken the connecting tram up (special transit deal between the city authorities and the commercial places, can't let anything get in the way of little kids making their folks spend money on the latest street-walker Barbie or trying a new Robbie the Rabbit cookie). Probably wouldn't have worked, though, in a world of mad TVs and undead dogs, why the hell would a short tram built just for the short distance between the town and the mall work? Come to that, what the hell kinda fellow passengers might I have to deal with? Just as well I'd walked, I thought, as I passed the tram sitting rusty in its bay. I watched it for a bit, almost daring it to light up and start moving just to spook me. Nothing. I turned my back on it and headed on through the park. All the paths along the park were closed except for the central one Paul told me they always keep open to allow folks through. Midnight, three am? No problem, right this way. Right this way always takes you past the main attraction, Paul said, the horse carousel, each one handpainted and with its own name and history.

I was approaching that now, and as I did I thought it weird that he forgot to mention they'd painted the form of a little girl in a blue dress on it, or that people left wheelchairs there when they got bored. I half expected one or the other to move as I got closer, or disappear. All that happened, though, was that the wheelchair turned out to be all rusted to hell, like it had been there for years, and the painting of the girl was more like a burnt on shadow than anything else. The path beyond, now... the path beyond had disappeared somehow, and a door stood open, leading up a long passageway. I could just about see a blonde girl disappearing into the distance. Kate!

I lurched forward to follow, but saw as I did that a gate had opened to my left. An alternate route to follow, one that would get me the hell outta here quickly. I remembered the Dark Man's warning that I shouldn't follow the girl... something about the 'Mother of the God'. I hesitated, but not for long. Hell with that! I'd go where I wanted, for any reason I wanted. My life, my decisions.

I took a last look around the park, and stepped into the hallway. With that step, I ended a lifetime.

**A/N - This'll be the last filler for some time, I promise. At least, I promise to do my utmost to make it so.**


	14. Save it for Sunday

**A/N - Yep, Nathan's back! Told you I'd start this again when the girls reached the church.**

The passageway up ahead was mud dirty and short, and lead me to a second door. The hallway beyond was weird. Not that much had been normal so far, but that had just been out-and-out freakshow. This, though, was close enough to normal for the weirdness to be somehow weirder. Like it was out to get under your skin, crawl around within you, and make you just about apeshit crazy. But slow, soft, like being seduced by a beautiful girl and it's not until you're just about all the way there with her that you realise she's a corpse. Or like an ongoing tap dripping forever. Not that bad, for the first few minutes, but after that it's an itch you just gotta scratch. And scratch, and scratch till you lose your mind in the effort.

The walls were made of stone, and whitewashed. The door behind me allowed a draft through, creating a windtunnel effect. Enclosed as I was in there, I felt cold and alone. Something was written in red on the walls, but I didn't stop to read it, the feeling of being watched, of Something or Someone watching me and hating me for being there was too strong. I passed a metal gate on the way along, but it was chained closed, and when I went to take a closer look a black cat jumped out of nowhere at me, snarling. I ran the rest of the way up the hallway.

Eventually I came to a door, and could hear voices beyond it, a young girl and an older woman. The door wouldn't open on my first try, and on my second, my hand just went right through it.

That scared me, I can tell you. But I was too curious to know what was going on to pay much mind. If my hand could go through, maybe the rest of me could, too. I stepped through the door and found myself, of all places, in a church. Of sorts.

A woman dressed in black, with long white-blonde hair, was standing behind the altar at the far end of the church. A short-haired blonde girl, with a white bodywarmer, short denim skirt, and handgun aimed at the woman, was stood with her back to me. Not my Katie. I'd been fooled! But, then who was this? They could almost have been twins, what the hell?

As I watched, the girl spoke.

"Checkmate."

The older woman shook her head. "Not yet," she said calmly, "the time is not yet at hand." She  
raised her hands and eyes, and held forth like she was preaching. "The time when all will be forgiven their sins. When the paradise we have long dreamed for will arrive. After the Judgment and Atonement, an eternity of bliss."

Her voice changed, and the comments seemed to be directed at someone else. Comments full  
of pain... and of love, somehow.

"Ohh, Alessa," she said, "the world you wanted is nearly here..."

"That's _not_ what I want." said the girl, holding her gun steadily aimed at the woman. Her voice had changed, too, deliberate, definite, and filled with grim intent. I stepped closer, trying to avoid the seats, but ended up walking straight through them, literally.

Waist-deep in the wood, I found I couldn't feel it at all, so I just kept walking through the pews, and didn't stop till I was stood looking into the gap between them I could see them clear as I see my hand now, but neither of them saw me. I didn't even cast a shadow.

The woman looked straight at the girl, sounded surprised that the comments could be taken to be directed at the girl in front of her. "Not _you_. Alessa. Your _true_ self." She tapped her heart. What the hell? The girl wasn't who she was, but really someone else? Some 'Alessa' who wanted another world?

The girl shook her head, "But I am Alessa." Suddenly I was scared of her, rather than this freaky blonde woman. What kind of... thing was this in the cute little skirt and blonde hair? She looked like a normal kid, but that new voice, that revealing that she was 'Alessa', whoever the hell that was... Somehow the name made me cold, made my skin feel like it wanted to just crawl off my body and run away rather than face her.

'Alessa' spoke again. "My little Claudia. My dear, sweet sister."

The blonde woman came around the altar, stunned. "Alessa? Is it _you_? Ohhh, how I've missed you!"

The girl ignored this. "I don't _need_ another world." she said coldly, "It's fine the way it is."

The woman was confused, "But you said it yourself. 'The world must first be cleansed with fire.'"

"But _that's not_ what I want now." Whoever this new personality was, she had a completely different way of talking. A completely different voice, almost.

"Alessa, don't you _want_ happiness?" asked the woman, bewildered. "Have you become blind to all the hopeless suffering in the world? We _need_... we all _need_ God's salvation!"

Suddenly the blonde girl's attitude was in tune with her appearance again, her voice no longer 'Alessa's. "Listen. Suffering is a fact of life. Either you learn to deal with that or you go under." She clutched at her stomach and groaned, as though it hurt her. She straightened up and carried on. "You can stay in your little dream world, but you can't keep hurting other people." She clutched at her side again, removed her hand to wave it at 'Claudia'. "Besides," she continued, "I'll _never_ forgive you for hurting my father."

The woman in black shook her head. "I wish only for the salvation of mankind. But for that to happen, the _world_ must first be remade. And for that we need God."

The girl got angry at this. "You self-righteous witch! No one asked you to help!" The pain seemed to be back now, she grabbed her belly and fell to her knees.

The priestess gestured. "God is growing within you." She sounded satisfied, as though some plan of hers was working out. I was more confused than ever by now. A God growing in a girl? What the _hell_? The girl said nothing, but groaned with pain as she clutched herself. The priestess spoke again. "You despise me, don't you?"

"You're damned right I do!" the girl growled through gritted teeth.

The woman in black smiled and nodded as 'Alessa' clutched at her stomach. "That's good." And with that, she turned and left.

The girl on the ground whimpered in pain, and forced herself to stand, as it seemed to subside. She took a quick look at the paintings above the altar, portraits of a man and a woman offering a reed and a snake to the sun. What the hell kinda fucked up church was this?

Grabbing a tablet on the shelf behind the altar, 'Alessa' growled in anger, reloaded her gun, and gave chase, slamming the door behind her. Sirens sounded in the distance and my vision blurred. When I could see again, it all looked the same. Empty except for me, and lit by candlelight, but I could feel the altar when I touched it, could turn the pages of the Book on the altar, something about how God loved all Her children and wanted to lead us all to Paradise. I realised then, and it almost stopped my heart, that this was the Order church I'd heard so much about from my pal back home. The Order of Wish House infamy, some reporter with a Nazi name, Shribber or Skriber or something had done an 'expose' on it, and hadn't even gotten half as close to the truth as he woulda done by asking some of my buddies. If he had, it woulda turned his hair white and his skin black. I turned to run, and almost ran straight into someone stood behind me.


	15. Furry Friends

Well, ok, not behind me, per se, but damn close. I was just into the aisle and heading down it when someone just... up and jumped out at me. Juiced as I was on adrenaline and anger (who the fuck had the right to drag me into all this, anyhow?) I had my gun out and pointing before I even thought about it. 

However fast I was, though, the other thing was faster. Before I knew it, my hand was knocked off to the side, and I was sprawling on the floor, my throat screaming hell at me. The thing had knocked my hand away and forced... something against my throat so hard I couldn't breathe. As I lay there gasping for breath, the figure in front of me stepped forward, heavy weight of a foot pressed hard on my crotch, just daring me to move. I hadn't been taking in any images, running off the buzz, and now my vision was blurred, pain and oxygen deprivation had seen to that. I scrabbled away from the other, crawling on my hands and heels, and the floor tiles by my head exploded in a crash. I yelled out loud, stopped moving (he who knows when not to fight, ya know?), and waited for the next move. I wasn't disappointed.

"You just stay where you are, pal. Don't you move a fucking muscle. You and me, we're gonna have us a little chat…"

"Ka... Kate?" I croaked. What the freaking, furry fuck? The church had been empty when I got in, empty through the whole speech and argument, where'd this chick spring from? Maybe she's... no, that's not right... but it fits...

Damn it! Why didn't I see it? She's one of them! Has to be! How else could she always be getting the jump on me? But I'm getting away from the story, I'm sorry. I'll have to remember this for later, though. Anyway, like I was saying...

I propped myself up on my elbows and willed my sight back. She came into focus slowly, my blonde angel with a firearm, my goddess of death. Still as beautiful as ever, and my throat was fucking killing me. "Whathu... what'reyadoin?"

"Hah! Try that one again, pal. In English, this time, if you don't mind."

Damn, but she's got a smart mouth on her, that kid. She waved the gun at me, telling me to come on and try again. I swallowed, hard, and it felt like trying to drink hot coal. But I tried again. "What... are... you... doing?"

"Trying to get home, asshole, just like before. And here you are, getting in my way, again, waving guns around, again. I'm gettin kinda tired of this, you know?"

I pointed at her gun with the hand I'd been holding my own gun in. "You can't really talk, kid, you being the one standing over me with a gun. We're all born equal, ya know, I've got a right to a gun just like you do."

"Not when you can't control yourself, you don't. You haven't even got enough control to keep away from Angela in a place like this, what makes you good enough for that kinda power?"

I dragged myself upright again "Well all this is nice and all, Katie, but I gotta -" With a sudden smash and crack, the wooden seat to my side exploded in a shower of splinters. She was getting good with that thing. I froze.

"My name... is Kate. _Especially_ to pieces of shit like you."

I raised my hands, heart pumping furiously. "Listen kid, you may have a gun, but you can't have it all your own way, ok? I'll call you what the hell I want!"

She centred the sights on me and lowered them. "Not if you wanna keep your balls, old man." This chick was just about crazy enough to do it, so I let it lie. For now.

"Alright, alright. Ok Kate. It's cool." I lowered my hands slowly and turned to my right, where my gun musta gone. "I'm just gonna get my gun back, ok? I aint interested in hurting you or nothin, just don't wanna be monster munch, ok?"

She lowered her own gun, just a little, and nodded. Eyes on me the whole time. "Slowly. I'm watching you." I didn't dare turn my back on her, but I didn't dare go on without a gun, either. So I knelt down to reach under the seat it'd slid under. As I took the cold handle in my hand, I saw another pair of eyes, green cats eyes coming towards me fast. With a screech like you wouldn't believe, the damn thing clawed up my face, feet in my eyes and mouth, and leapt off my head. As I tried to regain my balance, something huge and hot as hell hit me in the chest, pounded up and leapt off my shoulders. A bark and yowl echoed once more, and faded away behind me, past where the altar stood.

I got up slowly, turned back to Kate, gun in hand, blood and scratches all down my face. She was staring at the door like she'd just seen a ghost.

"Don't worry, really, I feel great" I grunted. I tell ya, kids these days just aint got the manners they should.

Instead of worrying about my bleeding face or helping me up, she walked right past me and tried the door. It rattled in her hand as the lock held it tight. Frowning, she slapped it with her hand, like she was testing for something. I bent to check the gun and got up, sticking it in my belt. "It aint gonna hit ya back, ya know?"

"Those two," she said slowly, "the cat and the Dog. They were real, right?"

I felt the scratches on my face and winced at the cuts. "Yeah, they were real alright."

"And this door is real, too, and the bars were solid..." She trailed off, staring at the door.

A new voice chimed in, "It's a waste of time, Katie." We both turned to face the new speaker, and I felt that much more relieved when I saw her. The little dark-haired girl from earlier, the one that bastard in black had been holding hostage, came out from the side of the church. She looked like she'd been dragged backward through a bush, and her voice wasn't real steady, but she moved like she meant it, if you know what I'm trying to say. "The other door's locked, too. Sometimes things just don't work for a while," she said, "and you have to wait, or try something else. Or, or, or sometimes, something else has to happen first." A shadow passed over her face when she said that last part, and I was glad when it was gone. This kid must have had the hell of a time getting this far without dying or going looney tunes, no need for her to spend so much time remembering those things.

Kate musta thought something like that too, or wanted us to think she thought it, cause she just said "Ok then, I guess we wait. Or find out how we get outta here."

The other girl, Angela, had an idea, "Sometimes you've gotta find a key or something."

"So where should we look?" I asked. She shook her head, and Kate frowned.

"Lemme guess..." Kate said.

"It's not as easy as that" said Angela with a wry smile.

"Figures" said Kate.

"So what, then? We gotta make a key, unlock a key? What?" I asked.

"Sometimes there's puzzles," said Angela, "things you can't get to unless you've got something else first, or heads to turn, or a picture to finish. You uh... you can't just panic, or run. It doesn't help. Being lost is bad, but being found is worse."

"Alright then," I said, "Let's not get found, then. If there's a puzzle there's gotta be a clue, no-one sets a puzzle that can't be solved. Let's start looking."

We broke off and started looking around. Kate lifted everything she could find, books, paintings, I crawled around on the floor looking under the seats. If my gun could get lost under there, maybe a key could. Or a clue to the key, anyway. Angela just wandered around, I could see when I looked up from the seats. Whatever was keeping her head together, it was working against something nasty. I shot a question at Kate and jerked my head to the girl, mouthing "she ok?". Kate frowned, shook her head. I made a face, what was up? Not now, her gestures said. She held up a hand, wait. I guessed she'd tell me later. I got back under ther seats. I could wait. We were none of us going anyplace fast.


	16. Fragile Truce

There are times when you can't focus, like everything but what you're supposed to be doing is that much more interesting. Don't help trying to focus on it even harder, neither. The more ya try to resist, the harder it gets. The kinda thing that happens in tests, exams, studying, working. Hell, anything. I can't count the number of times I've looked up from the blackboard at the kids in front of me and seen them there physically, but in their heads, they're a million miles away.

My mind wasn't that far, just across to the next town, Brahms. But for all of that, it was like a world away. Or further. I couldn't shake the memories. That look on Angela's face had set me off thinking about Suzy and Jeff. Or, Jeff's attack on her, anyway. She'd spent the rest of her time there looking like Angela did just then, scared sick to her stomach and lookin so very hurt.

Looking under the seats, I saw Suzy's face as I walked in on them in the locker room. Peering behind tapestries I saw Jeff feeling behind her blouse. Looking over to Angela, I saw Suzy skulking in the corners and hallways, trying to avoid everyone. Just in case. Kate caught me looking and I flashed her what I hoped was a reassuring grin. She scowled, guess she wasn't in the mood to be reassured.

I tried to focus on the search, but couldn't concentrate. I probably missed some real important clue about twenty times cause of that, but what can ya do?

_I'd been working late that night, even the janitors had gone home for the day, but I had stuff to catch up on. Seems like some folks think a school should be all about paperwork and nothing about actually teaching. You wanna keep the job, though, you gotta keep up with the paperwork. So I was keeping up. Or trying to. Kicked it in for the day, though, and headed home. My route through the school building to the car park took me past the sports hall and locker rooms. That's where I heard it. Not much of a noise, the sorta thing the news reporter to your mind would put back to page 23 on a normal time, just between the international business and the obituaries, a dead zone. You'd hear a little shriek all the damn time during the school day, recess games or hallway gossip, but it was past six there, even the football team staying late for practice had gone home, and science club woulda been packing up their astronomy kit (a short telescope, a notebook and a whole lotta hope) and heading home. So why this little squeal, suddenly cut off, and... just as you strain to hear it, a muffled voice?_

_A door had closed off down the hall, and I went to check it out. I shoulda been the only one there, and if someone had gotten in to mess with the kids there... well, that just wouldn't fly. No sir. I made it down the hallway nice and quiet, making sure not to breathe heavy or trip over anything. A steel pipe stood up against the wall, leftovers from the plumbers who'd fixed the showers earlier that day. Only 3 foot long, and a bit rusty, but it'd do. As I got closer to the door of the boys' locker room, the muffled voice got louder, and I picked up the pace. A high-pitched yell rang out 'No! Leave me alone, please! Stop **touching** me!' A slap and a sudden intake of breath, and the girl's voice squealed in pain. I had reached the door now, and kicked the fucking thing wide open._

I looked up from staring under the seat, someone stood right by me. Kate crouched down, bringing her face level with mine. "You keep staring at Angela like that, I'll start to think I can't trust you," she said, nice and quiet, probably trying to keep the kid calm, made sense I guess.

"Sorry," I said. "I just... I guess I feel bad, ya know? After how I was before to her and all. Just looking at her now, I..." I waved my hands helplessly. I knew I'd acted like some complete asshole, and to a girl who looked to be even worse off than Suzy was, but how to make it up? Specially when I couldn't even convince Kate to stop pointing her gun at me. I tried again. "There was a girl back in Brahms High, where I used to work. She got in trouble. Or, Jeff made trouble for her, and -"

Kate interrupted me, "Jeff? That _thing_ back in the mall?" I nodded, slowly, keeping an eye on the handgun she had levelled at my belly, outta sight of Angela. All the better to scare you with, my dear.

"Yeah, him. He grabbed her after school one night and... well, if I hadn't gotten there in time, it woulda been bad."

Her face softened, the gun point lowered. I could have grabbed it off her, I guess. Woulda made a kinda sense, but only if I'd wanted to risk her never trusting me again. Place like this, a gun as self-defense aint just a constitutional luxury, it's a survive-the-next-hour necessity. "You stopped him raping her, and he wanted to pay you back? That why he wanted you so much deader than me?"

I shrugged. "I guess so. That and some other stuff. You know the academic and all"

"So you really did fail him?"

"Yeah, and not just for the studies. He needed to get kicked out, so I... I guess you could say I sabotaged things a little bit.'

"Cause of Suzy?"

A flash of Suzy's face, cold and pale in the rain, mud spattering her pretty dress. "Yeah," I said, "Cause of Suzy" Splat of cold mud on cold skin. Azure eyes closed against the unfeeling moon. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Pulled myself together. Because of Suzy.

"We were in the haunted house," Kate told me, "It's haunted alright, but not by puppet ghosts. More like..." Her turn to flail helplessly for words. "...like shadows of people's own evil. Or something, I dunno. Your past catching up to you, or something." She looked scared saying it, and my betting was she was glad she'd gotten outta there before it had caught up to her. Kept quiet though, just in case saying it broke our little piece of peace.

"So it caught up with her pretty bad, huh?" I asked quietly.

She looked me over coolly. I guess she was trying to figure how much to tell me. How far could she trust me? "Yeah, it caught up to her pretty bad. Suzy got off light by comparison." said Kate.

Ashes to ashes, mud to mud. I looked at Angela. I'd certainly never seen Suzy look that bad. But then, and I remembered those eyes shut against the mud and the moon, I hadn't seen Suzy that much. Not enough to keep her safe after all. I guess I didn't try hard enough. This time, though...

"Will she be ok?" I asked Kate. "Is there anything I can do?" She smiled at me. A real smile.

"No." She said, and put her hand on mine. "But thanks for asking. The Dog was with her just now, I think she needs time to recover by herself before she can talk, ya know?"

I stiffened. The Dog? "Can't say I like that mutt much," I said, "but if it helps the kid with... whatever caught up to her, I guess it can't be that bad."

She grinned and pushed at me. "Come on, old man. We gotta get outta here before I start thinking you're a nice guy or something and the world gets even crazier." I watched her walk away, what they used to call 'walkin wavy', shook my head and turned back to the search. This kid was turning out to be one hell of a lot more than just some piece of ass. And Angela... well, maybe somehow I could make up for Suzy.

Footsteps behind me made me grin. "Forget something, kid?" A black boot came down, just missing my hand. Smell of leather and smoke. I looked up, my stomach in knots, and found myself eye to muzzle with an outstretched handgun.

"Not quite, Mr Crawley" said the Dark Man at my side. "I haven't forgotten anything today"


	17. Kill Your God

**A/N - Rewritten for your pleasure.**

I jumped to my feet. Him again! And I'd thought he was finished with, the damn bastard! I drew my gun from my belt and waved it at him. "You get the hell away from us!" I yelled, "I shot you once and I'll shoot you again!"

He raised his eyebrows in amusement. "And you think it'll work this time?" He smirked. "You're very wrong. You shoulda killed me with those shots, but here I am." He spread his arms, then flapped a dismissive hand at me, "You're nothing to worry about, and shooting you would be a waste of ammo. But I see you won't give up chasing the mother of the god, and you keep turning up with the girls, so I guess..." He turned with a sigh and strode up the aisle to the altar, where the girls had been watching our reunion with bated breath. He moved around the altar, keeping it between him and the girls. That's still weird, even thinking about it now...

He got to the altar and stood where the blonde priestess, Claudia, had stood. He held up the book of rituals. With his back to the god in the glass window, he raised it up to the air, muttering something. If that was weird, though, what he did next was just… I don't even know how to say it. He took a long black object out from his coat, and cut his forearms open with it. Holding his hands over the book, he let the blood drop onto the old yellowing paper, eyes closed, his lips moving in spell or prayer or... something else. The air above the book shimmered like above a fire and I could hear a faint crackling.

He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and plunged his hands into the book. Flames ripped up suddenly from the open pages, raced up the Dark Man's arms and overtook him. Angela started forward to try to get to him, to help him or something, I guess... Kate was faster, though, and yanked her back, struggling, out of the reach of the searing fire. The Dark Man paid neither of them any attention, though; he just kept staring into space and muttering under his breath, swaying slightly, but not falling.

How he stood there, I just don't know, but he somehow stayed standing, eyes wide open, teeth gritted, a blazing column of fire and darkness. His skin turned red with the burns and began to crack and bleed. Just as I was sure he was finished, the sirens sounded again. My vision blurred, and as I lost sight of things, I saw the Dark Man fall forwards onto the altar. But he also fell _through_ the altar. I should have cared more about that, maybe, but I wasn't there anymore. I was falling, floating, and nothing mattered.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o00o0o0

I fell through darkness, and landed hard on my feet, in a row of ugly wooden pews. I was in another chapel, but this one was darker, the air was thicker. Once again, I wasn't alone. Across the aisle, I could see Kate and Angela. But more importantly, between us, in the aisle itself, were Claudia and Alessa. The three of us stood in our places, watching the blondes, the woman and the girl, arguing again. Over a dead body? Alessa stepped forward, shocked.

"What did you do?" she gasped. The guy on the ground musta been someone important to her. Poor bastard.

The priestess was calm, dismissive "Oh, nothing important." The dagger in her hand said it all. She'd just killed this guy, and it was 'nothing important'.

I approached the railings separating the pews from the aisle and leant forward to watch more closely, but couldn't lean out beyond the pew tops. Somehow I just felt pressed back, restrained from going out further. So I stayed where I was. I could hear and see ok anyway. I guess, after all I'd seen so far, a dead body shouldn't have bothered me, but somehow the careless way he'd just been dismissed got to me.

Alessa spoke slowly, "You're not going to run? ...I guess this is the end."

"No, the beginning," said Claudia, "As Vincent said: The time has come."

A pause. "Alessa, I'm saddened that you didn't agree to this on your own. But I thank you for nurturing God with all the hate in your heart. It's time for Mankind to be released from the shackles of sin that bind them."

Shackles of sin? The chick was nuts.

Alessa was desperate now, pleading for sense. "But a God born from hate can never create a perfect paradise!"

"_Happy_ people can be so _cruel_," sneered the woman in black. "Is it so hard to believe that sympathy could be born from pain and suffering?

"Why do you reject God's mercy?" she asked angrily, "Why do you cling to this corrupt world? You know that only God can save us."

Alessa sneered. "And save you too? Happy ending? I'd rather go to Hell."

"No. I don't expect to be saved," said Claudia slowly. "That's fine.

"Alessa, my dearest... For the pain I've caused you, I deserve no mercy. Even if it was to save mankind, it was too deep a sin. It was hubris for me to try to hasten the day of Her arrival. Sacrifices were made, and those are my sins."

The body on the ground gasped, struggling to lift his head. "If you feel so guilty about it, why don't you go to Hell!" He spoke to the girl in front of him, "Heather, use the seal!"

"Vincent?" said Claudia, surprised. I couldn't blame her. I mean, to figure yourself all high and mighty and then to have your dead enemy still live? That's gotta suck.

The girl reached into her jacket pocket and brought out a white disc with a red seal drawn on it. The priestess recognized it in an instant. "The Seal of Metatron!"

"Now your stupid dream is over!" spat the man on the ground.

"Ohhh, that's just a piece of junk," Claudia sighed. "What do you think you can do with that? Do you really think it can kill God? I'm sorry to see you fell for my father's foolishness." She walked around to his side.

"What?" gasped Vincent.

"You're pathetic," she mocked.

She lunged down suddenly, plunging the dagger into his heart. She stood up again, hands together prayerfully. "But God loves even you." She turned to the girl, Heather or Alessa, the kid didn't stand a chance. "Now Alessa, there's nowhere else to run."

The blonde girl swayed and staggered with pain. Her skin turned blotchy red, she seemed to blur somehow and screamed out, bent over with pain and clutching at her belly. She collapsed to the floor, bloody blotches crawling and mingling over her body.

"Just accept it, Alessa," said that bitch of a priestess. I tried to run out from the pews to help the kid, but couldn't get past the railings. That force pressed me back again, whatever it was. Across the aisle, I could see Angela hide her face in her hands. Kate yelled out, but I couldn't hear her. She hit out at the air, as though thumping some invisible barrier. Guess we were both stuck.

"The pain will disappear," said Claudia smugly.

"Oh, I've been waiting so long for this." Joyous now, she smiled. "Even as a child I saw the coming of this day. I knew that I would be a witness to it, Judgment Day!" She watched the kid's agonies in delight but...

Suddenly things weren't going her way no more. The girl's skin turned back to its real ivory white color. The priestess gaped. "Alessa?"

Alessa stood up, furious. "Shut your stinking mouth, bitch!"

She swayed, put her hand to her heart to steady herself, and drew out a pendant from inside her top. She opened the pendant and looked at something small and red inside.

"What are you doing?" asked Claudia.

The girl ignored her, turning the red tablet over in her hand "Dad..." she murmured. She screwed up her courage and swallowed the tablet. Immediately her skin turned red again and she fell to the ground. She started to retch, and Claudia looked pleased. I was just confused as hell. I mean, I knew some girls at the schools I'd taught at had made themselves throw up to 'keep in shape', but there's a time and a place, ya know? Plus which, I've never seen a girl less in need of a diet. Except maybe Katie... Anyway, back to Claudia in the chapel...

"She's nearly here," she smiled. The smile turned to a frown as she realized something was still wrong. "What is it? Alessa, what have you done? What did you swallow?"

Alessa ignored her and retched harder. With a liquid cough, she spat out a... thing. A bloody fetal creature fell from her mouth onto the cold floor. She got to her feet and staggered back a few steps as the thing on the ground twitched obscenely. I felt the bile rise in back of my own throat, such things as that... I just... I dreamt about it, ya know. That horrible bloody heat of the thing. I could feel it even from that distance. Or maybe that was just my mind. This place is enough to crack anyone's nut. Alessa, though, took it in her stride.

"Looks like God didn't make it," she sneered. Shakily, she walked back up to the thing on the floor, and raised a boot to stomp it.

"Stop!" Claudia cried out.

She rushed forward, faster than Alessa could walk. She pushed the girl back and scrabbled on the ground for the worm, holding it up in her hands "God is...!"

Alessa was shocked. "Claudia!" she gasped. Claudia tipped the fat, bloody worm into her mouth and began swallowing it. Alessa covered her eyes in disgust. I woulda done the same, but had to watch in morbid fascination as the crazy bitch's throat pulsed with the slimy worm's squirming progress over her teeth, along her tongue, and into the dark recesses of her throat. She gulped, and the thing was swallowed. I could just imagine it working its way down into her, making itself nice and comfortable. And ready.

"Alessa," said Cl/audia, getting back to her feet, "you cannot kill God." Her skin started turning red like the girl's did. "I will... I will birth God..." she groaned. "If you can't do it Alessa...

"...I will..."

She stumbled to the head of the room, towards a big oblong hole in the floor. Where an altar, a holy place, would be in any normal church. But here... an unholy of unholies, maybe?

"Claudia!" cried Alessa. "Claudia!"

But Claudia was too far gone to hear. She reached the oblong hole and stood uncertainly, facing the painting beyong. She swayed and, just as she was beginning to fall, something reached up out of it and dragged her down. Some huge monster, but it moved too fast for me to see anything. I just got the sudden impression of something all arms and grabbing and clasping, fetid love, and then it was gone, taking the priestess with it. The hole was ripped open now, a neat oblong gap mauled and gaping. The girl wasted no time, but grabbed her pistol from her pocket, checked the load, and jumped down.

Finally able to move beyond the railing. I approached the hole myself and saw Angela and Kate doing the same. We were all too fixed on what would happen next to even wonder how we'd gotten here together. Not that we didn't already know. That damn man in black. I leant over to look down and Kate leant beside me. A hand landed on my shoulder and jerked me back, but _hard_. Kate got the same rough treatment. We landed flat on our asses and watched as that familiar black shroud approached the hole and knelt at the edge. Alessa's voice rose up from the darkness beneath.

"You can't be dead! I was going to kill you!"

A pause, then:

"This is God...?"

An unearthly gurgling scream, and the sound of gunfire. Alessa was in trouble, and only with that damn handgun! Me and Kate started scrambling to our feet, wanting to help the girl, but the Dark Man threw a hand up in a 'stop' gesture, and we were both knocked off our feet. Knocked off, I tell ya, like he'd just floored us with a two-by-four, though there was three feet open space between us.

"This is her fight," he said, not turning, "Whatever happens, it's gotta be her that does it." He leaned forward and watched the battle happening below. We approached again, but slowly, and with no intention to jump down. Getting knocked back that hard makes ya sore.

It didn't take long. All the hate in the kid's heart may have nurtured the 'god' in front of her, but that was nothing compared to the hatred she directed at destroying the thing, and soon it was clear that none of the fire tricks it threw at her would help it. When she got in close to beat at it with a sharp Japanese sword, it flailed at her wildly and too late. Soon it just fell to the floor, and didn't get up when she came in for the final strike. She kicked at it viciously. The kinda fury that drops a TV on a dead man's head just to prove a point, when everyone knows he's already dead. _Go ahead, kid_, I thought, _Kill it just as dead as you like, though it'll be years before it stops killing you in your dreams. But here and now, kill it._ Finally satisfied, she turned, her pocket flashlight highlighting the ring of razor-sharp spikes that had kept her in the arena with the god that failed.

"Is this the end?" she asked the air, lost and bewildered.

"I guess it's time to roll the credits." Her voice cracked slightly and she began to sniffle. "Daad..." she wept. She collapsed to the ground and sobbed. The man in black nodded to himself and watched her. After a while, she finished crying, and forced herself to get up. As she began to walk away from the corpse, the Dark Man fell forward, grabbing us on the way down. We fell with him to the chamber below, and landed heavily on the corpse of the god. Of course, _he_ landed on his feet, and caught Angela as she fell, before setting her down on the ground, too.

Alessa stopped in her walking and turned suddenly, surprised. Muzzily I wondered how she could now see us when we'd been invisible all this time.

She couldn't, apparently, she just cocked her head, listening, and then I heard it too, a whisper just about audible. The air in front of her shimmered and she frowned, readying the handgun again as the shape in front of her got more visible, but not more solid. A ghost of some kind, I guessed. Kill a demon 'god' and just when you think you're safe, a damn ghost. But she didn't seem scared. Not that she would, I guess, but her face broke into sunshine as she recognized the tall, dark-haired figure in front of her.

She stood still, stunned. "Dad! I thought you were..."

The shade in front of her nodded. "I am. But _He_ let me say a last goodbye first. A last favor, maybe, for helping out."

"He?" she asked, confused.

"Metatron, the one Dahlia talked about back then. But nevermind about that now. Heather, my little girl…Or Cheryl, to give you your real name."

The ghost stepped forward, tried to stroke her hair, and shook its head gently (and sadly, I thought. But how much can you tell from a _ghost_?) when its hand went right through her.

"You always were my little Cheryl, you know that? Not a replacement, not the original, just... my little girl, always loved as though you were my own. Then, and now, and always."

She smiled, a tear leaking down her cheek. "I always was, even when we ran from that bad man, and changed my hair, my name, everything about us. I still remember it. Just about.

The name you gave me first was the one I kept in my heart, because you gave it to me." Her face screwed up with the effort of not crying, though the tears were flowing out freely now.

"I wanted you to know," said the dead man, "how proud you made me. How much I've always loved you. Even when I feared you were a demon I couldn't believe it completely. You were always so precious, so when you were given to me, I gave you the name of my first daughter. To keep her alive in you, and you alive in me." He began to fade. "I don't have much time left, Cheryl. Promise me you'll remember this. Remember me. Remember that I love you. Always have, always will." His voice sounded more urgent now, with their time coming to a close.

"I'll remember," she choked through her tears. "Dad, stay! You told me you were the strongest man in the world! Don't leave me! Who will... who'll I go to? Who'll look after me now?" She was openly crying now.

He shook his head slowly, and I could almost see the smile on his face. "I was, Cheryl," he said, "for as long as I had you, I was the strongest man in the world. I came through Silent Hill and back to find you, and I kept you safe. When _she_ came to find out about you, I wouldn't tell her anything, even when she was killing me."

"Dad!" she wept, as he faded further, "Stay! Please! I need you, Daddy!"

"Goodbye, Cheryl." His voice, calm and sad, hung in the air, his image almost gone. "We'll meet again some time…

"…I'll be watching over you, make me proud."

"Watching over me?" she sniffled, "So you'll be there?" But he had faded completely. "Dad? Dad? What do you mean? How can you leave me? Dad!"

Silence was the only reply. Slowly, accepting the silence, she turned to leave, still sniffling. She caught sight of the god at our feet. Not of our feet, though. Just as well, she wouldn't have wanted us butting in on that, and I wouldn't have wanted to. Not for anything.

"_You_ did this." she hissed at the dead monstrosity. "You and your damned monsters! Just you hope they don't try anything again to bring you back! I'll find whole new ways to make you suffer for what you've done to us."

She spat at it, and threw her handgun down onto the floor. "So much for you. I was right, you weren't much of a god to be killed by a human."

She straightened up, took a deep breath to calm herself. "I guess I don't need all this anymore." From somewhere on her she took a shotgun, an Uzi, the Jap sword, and threw them down with the handgun. "You'll rot and ruin, and they'll just rust."

She fingered a taser thoughtfully. "I'll keep these though," she said to herself, "my own things. The stungun Dad gave me, and the knife that I got to feel tough." She smiled, and laughed a little. At herself or the world around her, I couldn't tell.

"Feel tough, eh? Yeah, after all this, I don't think I need to worry about all that anymore. Lipstick and pretty smiles and feeling tough. I know who I am now. Who _we_ are, and that'll do just fine."

With that, she turned on her heel, jumped lightly up onto the spikes, disappeared into the shadows, walking out and back into her own life. Whatever that might be. Whatever she chose to make it.

We stood in the darkness, with the dead god under our feet, the heap of used weapons in front of us.

We stood in the darkness, and waited for someone to speak.

**A/N - Major Major Major thanks to Gaia Faye for her exhaustive beta-reading of the original draft. This is the final draft, now, though. Period. :-) **


	18. Gods and Monsters

So there we stood, a nice little crowd of gawking tourists, if ya like. "Ladeez and gennelmen! Over here, the seven-foot iron spikes! Watch your step little girl, them things're _sharp_! And over there the local god! Don't worry, it's dead now. I think." You can just imagine the theme park they could make of it, can't ya? Tasteless? Sure, but when's that ever stopped folks doing a thing to make cash?

So that was us there, in the dark and cold, with a dead monster at our feet and one hell of a lot of ammo in front of us. How that little kid had been carrying all that, I dunno, but there it was. Kate, meanwhile, seemed to be havin a bit of… uh… trouble, getting to grips with things. She kept looking around the place, feverish and quick, like she was expecting something to jump outta the walls or something. I dunno, though, the place felt kinda peaceful to me, sorta quiet and finished. In the dark and cool, I coulda stayed there a long while, just recovering from everything. I don't think I've ever felt quite as at peace as I did there, in the cool shadows and the warm light. Kate, though, was really twitchy. Scratching nervously at herself, she flicked her head back and forth, sometimes shaking her head or knocking a stray hair back, like she thought she could… I dunno, swat away a bothersome thought or some such.

It didn't work, though. Whatever was bothering her wouldn't let her alone, and she broke down her calm veneer, beginning to talk, but breaking down to a shriek:

"What... What the hell was all that? What's going on? Where are we? There's not supposed to... why's there a church here? What's this thing we're standing in? AND JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!"

I stepped forward, tried to calm her. Not a hug, you understand, she'd probably feel that a little too… close for comfort. Don't wanna bother a girl like that. Plus which, she still had that gun and the trigger-happiness. So I just went to put a hand on her shoulder, nice and easy-like. Tried to calm her with a calm voice:

"Easy, Kate. Take it easy."

Calming wasn't an option, looked like. She whirled round the instant she felt my hand, and I'll swear she almost blew my fucking head clean off. But she saw it was me and blinked, like she was trying to reset her thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, though, she was looking a little more down, and saw the monster at our feet, too. That didn't help her state of mind. She gasped and jumped back, looking like she was gonna start screaming again.

"Just… take a breath, ok?" I said to her, " I know none of this makes sense, but we gotta keep cool, ok? Besides," and here I nodded to Angela, who was sat on the dirt floor looking round like some six year old on her first cannabis trip, "Besides, you're gonna scare the kid."

Finally Kate lowered the gun, frowning at me. But at least she didn't seem so trigger-happy anymore, so I counted that a blessing. _Best to leave her to it,_ I figured, and wandered off to investigate the room we were in, as much to let her get back on balance as to actually find out what was going on. The spikes around the room, now, that was some kinda weird. I dunno where to begin explaining it properly. They were set up so that anything facing the 'god', or where the 'god' had been standing with its back to the wall, woulda been facing the 'god' with their back and sides to the spikes. No escape. What _was_ that place? Even now I catch myself thinking about it, and that musta been at least a day ago, probably more. Like I said, though, time's weird here. Walkin up to the Amusement park took me, _I_ thought, about half an hour, but comparing notes later with Kate I found that I had turned up there about an hour after leaving the mall, going by her time and experiences. If I can trust her, that is.

Anyway, those spikes were just too weird to be real, I thought, but I didn't wanna test that theory too hard. Anything that sharp could do a guy some nasty damage if he tested them with his bare hands. A 'god' that holds its people hostage like that would be capable of about anything, I thought, so I just tapped at the things with my gun. It made a weird metallic sound when struck, like a _ting!_ kinda noise. It rebounded in my head, helped clear my mind in the purity of sound. I could hear the girls talking quietly behind me, and didn't wanna interrupt. Besides, that sound was still there, melodic and soothing. _Let it be_, I thought. Sometimes it's best to just let people know where you are, and leave it at that. If they need ya, they'll come, otherwise… best to leave them be. And to hope they _will_ come when they need you. Did Suzy… would it have been better to…? No, can't think about that now. They'll be back here soon enough, then we've gotta cross the lake, find out what the hell's really going on here. I gotta finish up here soon, so I'll just get on with it. Excuse me if I miss anything out, but it feels like they're gonna get here soon. Getting back to it, then…

I tapped around a little more, getting a sense of the place and listening to the tone of the conversation behind me as the sound of the metal soothed my own mind. Didn't listen to the words though. At least, not on purpose, but enough to the tone to hear if anything was wrong. Sounded ok, though, calming words from Kate to Angela and back. I wondered what the hell had happened to them in the Park, there. My own trip had been quick and quiet, a few mascot costumes dumped around the place and some… some things that had probably been damn fool enough to attack Heather or Alessa or Cheryl or whatever the hell her damn name had been. But nothing _live_ had been around that I'd seen, and nothing seemed to have attacked Kate, either. Maybe the place had… this sounds crazy, I guess, but maybe the town itself had been saving up the nastiness for Angela? I mean, she had said she was being kept here, maybe things happen more, or differently when you've been here longer.

It sounded like Kate was trying to make sure Angela would keep a gun from the heap of ammo. Angela with a weapon? Sooner ask a kid to beat up the boogeyman with a stuffed toy. But if there was even the outside chance that she'd actually _use_ it to keep herself safe… Or at least safe from being attacked _again_…

"I think that's a good idea', I said, coming back to them, "Ya never know what you're gonna run up against in this place." _Speaking of which,_ I thought, _that Uzi's looking pretty sweet. I could do with that._

"I'll take the Uzi, if you don't mind?" I asked, as I picked the submachine gun from the pile.

Kate took the shotgun for herself, and just as I thought we were making progress, Angela piped up worrying about her beloved Damian. Argh, the less I hear about him, the happier I'll be, that motherfucker, messing up my hand like that. I couldn't feel sorry for him. Still can't.

"That guy can take three fucking bullets straight and survive," I told Angela, "What's _he_ gotta worry about?"

"I think..." came a slurred voice behind my shoulder, "I'll take the blade." Slowly, so slowly, Damian leant in past us and held the sword's handle. I couldn't take my eyes off his hand. The skin was black, and burnt. It cracked open and oozed blood as he gripped the handle.

"Oh... Oh God..." Kate turned away from the man behind me and I stepped away, as much to get a good look at him as to get away from that smell, that horrible barbecue smell of burnt flesh…

"Relax, Katie," he said to her "It could be worse."

"How?" I asked, "How in God's name could it be worse?"

"You really don't want to know," he told me. And going from the laughter in his voice, dark and completely inhuman, I knew I really _didn't_ wanna know. I couldn't take my eyes from his face, though. Kate didn't see it, I guess, couldn't have being as she turned away so sudden, but I saw. I saw his burnt flesh, saw his clothes melted into his skin, his hair burnt and crisped. Most of all, though, I saw his face. That face, he was so _calm_, so horribly calm. The fire had burnt his skin black, and his eyes were made darker by it all, they glittered like jet. Like dead stars burning bright into the unholy space between worlds…

I guess I woulda been staring all day if Angela hadn't interrupted. "Damian!" she gasped, "How did you...? What...?"

She was interrupted herself, though, before she could finish the question. Something had come into the room, joining us with no sound at all. It was fussing over the body of the 'God' monster, shaking it as though trying to wake it.

When that didn't work, it looked up at us. It had no eyes. My God, it had no eyes, but it stared at us, stared right through us, and I knew it could see everything inside me. Everything I'd done, all the things I'd thought and said. All my badness. And it _liked_ it, it was _hungry_ for it.

The soothing sensation I had felt earlier was being stripped away from me, I had felt calmed by the sound of the spikes, the cool and quiet of the room, and now… this thing made my stomach clench inside me, I was terrified, I tell ya. When it began to move to us, it moved angrily, as though it blamed us for the dead God. And I could barely move. I managed to bring my gun up, and I guess Kate did the same, trigger-happy little kid that she is, but it kept coming on. I began to really panic, and we both started to step back, my finger beginning to tighten on the trigger, ready to at least _try_ to get out of this alive. But no dice, it kept coming, and I couldn't somehow make the shot.

Then HE walked forward, coming between us and the monster, and just raised his sword. Just that, and the thing stopped dead in its tracks, looked at him funny, and went back to the fallen God. Weird shit, but the number of weird things that happen around that guy…

The monster took the dead God by an arm, and dragged it to face the way it had fallen. It knelt down beside it and suddenly they were both burning up. A kinda funeral pyre, I guess. The flames flickered in the silence. I could feel the heat from where I stood, rising gradually as the bodies were consumed. And it seemed like the flames were… spreading? If fire could spread across dirt. And even if it couldn't, that's exactly what it was doing. I shifted on my feet. How could we get out? Cheryl had walked on the spikes, but I was certain we couldn't follow that way. And there was no other way out. I had seen a doorway or something in the distance earlier, where Cheryl had left, but looking now, even in the light of the fire, I could only see solid rock walls. The door had vanished.

Kate seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Uh... Damian?" she said, " we should probably..."

"Yeah," I agreed, "we should get outta here. It's hot as hell in here..."

For some reason, Damian's head snapped up. "What?"

Angela's voice floated up from the ground, dazed and as though dreaming. "You see it too?"

"Ohno..." said Damian, "Nonono..." He sounded almost afraid, I thought then. Thinking about it now, I guess that was just a sham. But at the time, I really thought he was scared.

"For me," Angela said slowly, "It's always like this...

"Damian," she said, getting up, "Give me back that knife..."

"No... I, I won't."

"Saving it for yourself?" she said, mocking him.

"Angela. Please…. Don't do this..."

"For me, it's always like this," she repeated. "Always like this, always like this." She turned to the metal spikes on the wall. "If you didn't take it... I don't know what I might do..."

She reached into her pocket, and I panicked. _The gun!_ I thought, _she's gonna fucking shoot us! _Then she pulled it out, but it wasn't the gun. It was the black knife Damian had cut himself with. How the hell she got hold of it… I dunno. It wasn't the gun. All I could think was it wasn't the gun. My bemusement made me slower to catch on, but Kate got the message. Angela held the thing out, point inward...

"Angela! No!" Kate screamed, but didn't run to stop her, didn't even move. _He_ ran though, you bet he did. He ran and tried to stop her, but he was too slow. Or maybe just didn't care. Angela had buried the blade in her belly by the time he got to her. They faced each other in the firelight, Damian swaying in the effort of standing, Angela gasping in pain as her life's blood bled away. I couldn't help but remember when I first saw them in the restaurant, arguing over her being kept here. Maybe this was what he had been keeping her from…? But... what the….hell? Why would she, why would _anyone_ want that?

She looked up at the Dark Man, and smiled at him sadly. "I told you, Damian. I told you this town was too wrong. There's..." she broke off, the blood choking her speech, "There's nothing left here now. Just Darkness. Darkness devouring the whole town. And after that...

After that, nothing."

He looked like he could hardly stand anymore, but Damian drew Angela towards him, embracing her. "No..." he muttered, "no... tenebras...

"Post... post tenebras... lux."

As he finished speaking, sirens sounded in the distance, and a white light shone from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I had to throw up my hands to protect my eyes, but musta fallen down unconscious, cause all I remember next is just darkness. Darkness and a roaring silence as I fell.

And after that…

**A/N - So there it is. Took a while, but it's there. And thanks again to DigiSim (whoever you are) for pointing out that mistake I made in the last chapter.**


	19. A HOLE here

**A/N - Just needed to change a little something to do with the hospitals. Nothing major.**

I ached all over as I woke up, opened my eyes groggily. My face ached where it'd been pressed against the gravel road. How long had I been out? How the hell had I gotten here, anyway?

As I raised myself up on my arms, I saw something very familiar. Too damn familiar. Those damn black boots again, standing right by my side. Right by my hand again! I snatched my arm away and sat back on my feet, my new Uzi held up protective-like. I looked up to see what the hell _he_ was gonna do now, if he was gonna unsling that sword off his back and skewer me, or... But he wasn't even looking at me. He looked further on down the... down the road. I saw then, as I looked to see what he was looking to, that we were on a long stretch of road going... somewhere. In that fog and without knowing how I got to it, the place coulda been anywhere. So I watched him stare, seemin' anxious, out into the fog. He musta seen what he was looking for, cause he nodded to himself quickly, glanced at me, and turned suddenly, the ground fog hiding his feet as he walked further up the road. He stopped and dropped to his knees, busied himself with something on the ground. Whatever it was, it was hidden by the fog at that distance, and his arms vanished from the elbow down, completely obscured.

I pulled myself to my feet, walked up to him and he snapped his head up to face me. Eyes narrowing, he leant over his task protectively as he watched me approach, but did nothing to stop me. Now close enough, I could see what he was doing, what had taken his attention. Angela!

Stretched out there on the cold gravel, arms held over her head by Damian, she lay barely conscious. Moaning quietly and shaking her head slowly, she struggled feebly against Damian's hand on her crossed wrists. He tightened his grip and reached down with his free hand to her belt, shot me a furious glance when I began to protest, and pulled her top up slowly. The fabric stopped short, though, pinned to the girl's body by the long black knife, and I realised what he was trying to do.

"What can I do?" I asked. "Lemme help."

"Hold her wrists," he answered, not looking up from the knife, "She keeps _wriggling_! Dammit, Angela, you're really not making this any easier, you know that?"

"Don'… Donwanna… No hospi….." she muttered, her eyes closing themselves as she spoke.

"I know, I know," he answered. "I hate the place, too, but it can't be helped."

"Jus' lemme - "

"Shhhh…" he interrupted. "It'll be ok. All will be well. And all will be well. And all manner of thing will be well, remember?"

"Yeah," she murmured sleepily, her mouth curling into what might have been a smile, mighta been a snarl, "I didn't believe you the first time, remember?"

He snorted a chuckle and picked up a first-aid kit half-masked by the rolling ground fog. "This is going to hurt, Angela. But it'll be worth it, I promise. Nathan, hold on to her." He opened the kit and took out a gauze pad, licking his lips nervously as he saw the hot ruby blood streaming fresh down her side.

"That's _it_?" I asked, amazed he could think just _that_ would help. He shook his head irritably.

"It's enough, old man. Here and now, it's enough. Now shut up and hold her tight."

The girl on the ground moaned again, struggled weakly. Her slender wrists moved and ground against my hands, feeling so frail and weak in my grip. I kept her held tight, though. What else could I do? She'd die if he didn't do something…

And then he did it. In one quick movement, he pulled out the knife, lifted her cream jumper and, dropping the knife, pressed the gauze fast against the bloody, streaming wound in her belly. She shrieked as he pulled the knife out, her deep dark eyes slamming wide open, and screamed as the gauze met her flesh. Then… I dunno… The gauze fastened itself _into_ the flesh somehow, the bleeding from under it dried up, and the blood flow somehow stopped up entirely. It began to dissolve, melting into her skin and I looked at Damian in amazement.

"H- How did you…?" He shook his head at the question as he smoothed her clothes back down, carefully avoiding touching the faint pink scar, all that was left of the wound, her bare pale toned skin. My thoughts on seeing her first were worlds away, how could I have thought that about this kid, this wounded angel?

Damian shook his head again. "Me? No, I didn't do that. Silent Hill rules, Crawley. Don't tell me you didn't notice this place is different to the world outside?" He wiped the blade clean on his hands, sheathed it, and knelt to Angela again.

"How're you feeling, kid?" he asked gently. She shook her head at him much more vigorously than before and screwed up her face in pain. Tears began to roll down her face and she thumped at his chest as he took her in his arms and lifted her up, but it didn't seem to register with him. He turned away from me as though I'd suddenly ceased to exist, and started walking up the road.

I went to follow, yelling after them as he strode away with his burden. That turned out to be a mistake. He turned his head, narrowed his eyes and muttered something at me. My skin... suddenly it felt like I was burning alive. My head suddenly filled with pain, such pain, you got _no idea_. I screamed and grabbed my head, and as I staggered back, my feet slipped out from under me. The ground reached up, slapped the wind out of me and knocked me a good one on the back of the head. My vision blurred and blackened, and I just lay there for a spell, not able to move until I could feel my arms and legs again.

I sat up slowly, my head throbbing, skin tingling, to inspect the damage. None at all! My skin wasn't even reddened. The fire feeling had been some kind of fake? Scary shit, I tell ya… My strength was coming back now, so I got up again, slowly, and hobbled after them. Whatever power or spell or whatever the hell he'd used back at the chapel, it was obvious that had been just a taste of what he could do. Even the burning just there had been a warning. I followed them carefully, his dark appearance a beacon in the blinding white fog.

After a while we seemed to be coming into a town of some sort. Silent Hill, I guessed. After all, Silent Hill rules applied here... Broken-down signposts, knocked over garbage cans, and a good number of stores and restaurants. I remembered the pizza place again, that place was really beginning to haunt my thoughts. But why? They'd just been talking. No... I remember, they were arguing. And she had tried to... I dunno, there's something more there. But what?

Anyway, I followed them, at a damn good distance, along streets and past stores. I got close enough to hear him talking to her. Well, murmuring would be the better word, I guess, like you'd talk to a scared kid or something. She didn't say much back, but I could hear her whimpering. After a while until he stopped talking, stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to a mannequin store on his right. 'Storefront Poseables', the name on the facade read. His face twisted in absolute fury at a symbol scrawled on the glass. He set Angela down slowly, and brought something out of his pocket. A white disc with a red design. The Seal of Metatron! He musta stolen it after Cheryl found it useless. Somehow he musta taken it… or something.

_Any_way, he held the Seal in front of him and approached the glass, slowly, as though being held back. He got the Seal to the symbol, though, and at that moment I heard a scream. Turning to look for it, I saw a black cat across from me screeching at us as it bled onto the ground below. A sudden crash behind me made me start, and as I began to turn back to the window, I saw the cat fall down, the blood beginning to pool beneath its body. Turning to see what had made the crash, I saw Damian putting the white disc away again and pick Angela up. The window glass in front of them had shattered, leaving a circular hole within the symbol scrawl area. Of the symbol itself only the outer ring remained, and that had somehow turned… blue? A red symbol that turned blue and shattered the glass it was on? Before I could think on this, though, Damian stepped through the hole, lifting Angela carefully past the glass, and... and vanished. That broke up my thoughts on the symbol some, I tell ya.

I approached the window slowly, my new semi-auto at the ready just in case it was a trap of his. The headless mannequins stood silently, almost as though they were watching me. The one with a head was worst, its dead plaster eyes staring right through me. At my feet lay some papers. A tourist map of Silent Hill, a scrap of red paper which made my vision blur and blacken for a split second (musta been that knock I got when I hit the ground, I figured), and a page that looked torn from a small book, a journal by the size and the date printed on the top of each page. Some day-per-page diary planner thing, I figured. Not much on it, though, a grubby red-brown thumbprint and something scrawled in black ink. _Jan 10th_, I read, _Stay away from the old hospital! The nurses... Oh God, the nurses... _

Puzzled, I tucked the thing into my pocket, and leant forward to the window, hating the fact that it was bringing me closer to those damn dummies. The air tingled and felt sticky closer to the hole, I felt the edges carefully and felt nothing weird about the glass itself.

So now I had a choice, I could go out into the town and face… whatever I could find there with no-one to tell me what was going on, or take my chances with the Bastard in Black. I hated him, no doubts, but at least the fucker was straight with me, and could tell me what I needed to know to stay alive. I thought then, though I may have been wrong, goin' on what happened since, that he might be willing to help me. Certainly that I'd be safer if I could get some idea from him of what was what around here, so following him sounded like a good idea. I braced myself and stepped into the hole.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I fell through a tunnel, gray and flickering light, Alice down the rabbit-hole, and landed on a linoleum floor. The place smelt like a hospital, though it looked deserted, and seemed to have had the power cut. I flipped my flashlight on and rose, it musta been my imagination that I heard a door click shut further up the hallway, but I thought maybe I'd check it out, I sure as hell couldn't _see_ Damian or Angela anywhere. As I stood up, I saw a map on the wall beside me, a gaping hole in the plaster beside that, just above the floor I'd landed on. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the map off the wall and shone my light on it. _Brookhaven Hospital_, it read at the top. Three floors, one with all rooms marked M and then the number. M? M for... what? The map showed a 'Special Treatment Area' on a separate floor, rooms no smaller than cells. Padded rooms, maybe? M for Mental Health?

In a flash of imagination (or was it premonition?) I saw a small room, one wall lined with doors to even smaller cells. Padding within them lined with dirt, caked with blood, a muffled screaming from within one. I saw in my mind's eye, approaching the door to that cell, trying to look through the view hole, the door would swing open, something would fall out, a nurse, face bound in her own skin screaming muffled through the flesh, stench of puke and shit and blood and the sickly sweetness of a woman's sex and...

I blinked, opened my eyes as the smell hit me, a panting, whimpering approaching behind me. I turned slowly, not wanting to see what I might see... and the flashlight picked out the room number of the door next to me, M3. I turned, the flashlight shining across the number of the door beside me, M3, further around until finally it lit the blonde nurse not two feet from me. The same nurse I'd imagined? One I'd foreseen? Didn't matter, here she was, and… Oh God…

She clawed horribly at the air as she staggered to me, the stench rolling off her, making me gag. My flashlight picked out the shine of the fresh blood running down her face, her arms, the inside of her leg. The shine of the knife in her hand.

Her face was there. Her face was not there. The whimpers of pain were muffled by her own flesh, and the knife in her hand said she wanted mine. I turned and dove into the hole, back to that gray tunnel and wherever it would take me. I closed my eyes as I fell, kept them closed as I landed, not wanting to see anything worse. I half-hoped that if I was really _really_ lucky I'd wake up back in the burger bar with my face in my lunch. Bit of a stretch, but I guess we all have our dreams.

"Anywhere but there. Anywhere but there. Please, anywhere but there. 'Stay away from the hospital.' Anywhere but there," I muttered fervently as I opened my eyes. Thank God! I was back outside the mannequin store. I left in a hurry, didn't so much as look back. Anywhere but there.

I wandered the streets for a while, not really knowing where to go. I had the map, but no ideas about where I wanted to get to, some streets I just turned back from the moment I set foot in them, the growls and noises I heard from inside the fog put me off. Just a bit. Some streets had just up and gone, only a great pit dropped away where the asphalt shoulda been.

So I wandered and wandered, until eventually I just gave up and stood there at a crossroads wonderin' what to do next. That's when I saw the scrap of paper on the ground. I bent to pick it up and saw it was another diary scrap. As I closed my hands on it, pain in my head drove me to my knees, my eyes shut tight, and when I opened them again, I was someplace else. Again. This was getting to be a pretty fucked-up town, I'd known that, but at least until now I'd always known how I'd gotten to where I was. This shifting back and forth, though… that spooked me. I tried not to panic, tried to get a grip on where I was, and… where _was_ I?

Going by the parked ambulance and the nurse on a smoke break, I had to guess the back of a hospital. The sign above the door read Alchemilla Emergency Room, but this was a different kind of hospital to the one I'd just seen; powered, lit, and everything working as it should, a small-town hospital on a quiet night. The redheaded nurse turned and smiled at me. "Hi there. I haven't seen you around here before."

"No, I'm new in town," came the voice behind me, and I felt a shiver as something seemed to… to pass _through_ me. I yelled out with the shock of it, but there was no response from the nurse flirting with me, nor from… from the guy who'd walked _through_ me? I was in some kind of dream, then! Or a vision? Somethin' like that… I remembered my wife, Lisa, tellin' me once that sometimes people got, like, flashes of the past, or the future, or visions of things. She'd read that places known as 'famous suicide spots' or 'high-accident areas' often caused possessions and hauntings. And I'd just been in some kinda… fucked-up hospital, so maybe the same kinda psychic-type stuff was goin' on here, too. Was I being shown something that'd happened? Warned? I watched carefully.

The guy who'd walked through me, a tall guy with blond hair and a denim jacket, walked up to the nurse. Confidently, almost swaggering, he knew she was flirting with him, knew how to play the game. I had to admire his style, I couldn't have done any better myself. He held up a lighter to her unlit cigarette, cupping the flame with one hand, her face with the other, stroked her hair as he spoke. She smiled at him, pretending shyness. I could see a woman's cunning under that shyness, that slyness they all bring up when they're playing the game. He smiled back, a small grin as his hand brushed against her face, against her body as he returned the lighter to his pocket.

"I'm Damian," he said, "What's your name, beautiful?"


	20. Emergency Servicing

Damian!

I stared at the blond man before me. That rat bastard! So he'd been here before. Or maybe he just hadn't left in… in how long? How long ago was this now? Or far ahead? And was this even the same Damian? The Damian I knew was albino-white, with hair black like a raven and eyes to match, while this guy coulda been a poster-boy for ol' Hitler's master race, the great blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan. But... differences, similarities... whowas this guy here _really_? He looked all kindsa different, walked with a limp too, I noticed now.

While I was trying to figure all this out, the two in the ambulance bay carried on their sweet-talk, so I missed a lot of what was said. As I started to listen again, I heard her ask him what he was there for:

"So tell me... Damian," she rolled the name over her tongue, then grinned and pushed at him playfully, her eyes bright, her tongue licking her lips as though thirsty at a mere thought, "Did you come all the way out here just to meet little me? Or is there some... medical servicing you need?"

He grinned and picked a piece of lint off her red nurse's jacket, moving slowly, like a guy favoring one movement over another, painful one. "Well, a bit of both really. I came for some treatment, but you almost had me forgetting it."

"And that was...?"

"Well... It's kind of embarrassing. There's some - " He stopped suddenly and grimaced. "Some work I need done. Stitches or something, I dunno. But I got no insurance or nothing. I need some work off the books."

"Ohh. Right, I think I see," she said with a cunning smile. "You got caught up in a bit of a tussle, huh?"

"You could say that."

"Well, I'm not due to finish for another two hours. I've got to check on a patient, catch up on her paperwork, then I'll be free. Completely free, actually, I've told the doctor I'm gonna have to quit that case." Her face clouded over, like maybe 'that case' wasn't gonna be so easy to quit, or had been to hard to work on. The glint in her eyes dulled for a second, and then she smiled again. Overbrightly. Overcompensating, maybe. "So, if you got the time to wait, I could maybe..." She paused, put a hand to her head as though to steady herself, and then straightened up again, the seductive smile back again. "I could maybe... ahhh... squeeze you in?"

Her flirting was even stronger now, almost desperate, but if he saw, he didn't notice.

"Mmmm..." Damian smiled lazily. "Squeezing sounds very good." He grinned at her.

"But I dunno if this can wait, it's gettin' to be - " he grunted and faltered, but straightened up and waved her away as she reached out to support him, "Getting to be pretty painful. Once I'm set, though, how about we catch up later?"

She frowned and chewed her lip in thought, brushing at her hair again as though to remove distractions from her thoughts. Or to just wave a bug away. Was this girl quite sane, I wondered? All these twitches... Or maybe she was just nervous from flirting and worrying about 'that case'. The look on her face when she had mentioned it, she looked damn near terrified, I can tell ya. I mean real terror, the kind of terror that keeps you awake nights cause you can't trust the shadows around you, and makes you look over your shoulder every damn day. She came to a decision, and came out of her thoughts:

"Well, I guess Sue could help you out. I'll tell her I'll take care of the papers, so she won't ask any questions. How about that?"

"Perfect," he said, relieved, "And once I'm all stitched up, maybe we could get some drinks or something? I hear this place ain't that small that it doesn't have anywhere to go."

"Drinks! Yeah, just what I need!" Her eyes shone now, the desperation all but gone at the thought of relief from... whatever it was that had been getting her down. "This place has been driving me _nuts_, I need something to... ah... take my mind off things."

"Oh yeah? I think I might know just the thing."

She grinned at that, and let him pull her close, whispering something in her ear. As her smile broadened at what she heard, everything went black for me.

And now there was an elevator opening, and a woman's voice:

"Fourth floor, empty beds, more empty beds, and... emergency treatment on the quiet." A different nurse, this one, dark-haired, freckled, and with a posture and shy laugh that just about yelled 'wallflower'. Cute kid, but still just a kid, though she had to be at least twenty-odd. She drifted dreamily into the hallway, and 'Damian' followed, looking suddenly worried.

"Huh? She said she wouldn't need to tell you that it was - "

"She didn't," she giggled, "you just did, though, silly."

"Ah... Right. Guess I walked into that one." As they passed into the hallway from the elevator area, 'Damian' seemed tense now, distrustful.

"That you did. But stay cool, it's all good. You pass me the cash, I split some with Lisa, we say nothing to no-one. So long's you play nice with Lisa, that is. She's... she's a really great friend. So you better behave, mister!" She wagged a finger at him with a smile.

"I'll be good, Sue. You got my word."

"You better. In this way, Traveling Jack. Let's see what you got that just can't wait."

Another lapse of sight, the hallway faded.

And now she was fussing over him lying on a hospital trolley, looking like he'd rather be anywhere in the world but under that knife, in that hospital gown. Going by the gauze pads stuck over him now, he musta had the hell of a fight. Sue leant down and stuck a new pad on an ugly-looking gash running up his leg. That explained the limp, anyways. I looked around, somehow I was standing in the room with them, but not really there in quite the same way. I waved my hand through a cupboard. No resistance, just like in the chapel. I settled down to watch, patiently. She was almost done now, looked like. One last slash up his abs needed stitching and then that should be it, from what I could see. Now I knew why I hadn't seen any wounds before, he'd covered them with his clothing, had moved so's not to aggravate any pain. Sly, just too bad he hadn't been sly enough to not get cut in the first place. He pulled a face as Sue began her stitching again.

"Ow! Watch it!"

She said nothing, simply rolled her eyes at his bitching as she went back to it. He stopped complaining, grit his teeth instead. Silence settled, and I sank into a spare seat, watching the two, watching the room play out. Not as if I could do anything else.

The windows showed nothing but night outside, a gentle snow beginning to paste itself against the cold glass. The quiet feel of the place told me (in the way that sometimes you just _know_ something in a dream, ya know?) that the place was almost completely shut down for the night. Sue looked up from her stitching and frowned at Damian.

"So you said you just ran yourself against a railing, huh?"

"Yeah, just careless I guess," he said and spread his arms in a gesture of mock helplessness, then gasped at the sudden pain and dropped his arms sharply, clutching at the gauze pad on his chest.

"I guess you can add 'thoughtless' to that, too," she giggled, "You do that again and you'll have all those sutures out like _that_." And she snapped her fingers to emphasis the point.

He grinned sheepishly, "Yes, ma'am. I'll be good."

"On more than one count, too, ok?" She looked suddenly earnest. "Please? I've known Lisa a long time and she's got enough - "

He cut her off mid-sentence, "Oh, she's special, I know that. You can tell by looking at her. Don't worry, I'll be good, didn't I say already?"

"Just making sure," she said, waving a sharp pair of scissors under his nose dreamily, "You just be good, ok? Or else railings will be the _least_ of your worries."

She lowered the scissors along his body, and laughed at his sudden tenseness.

"Relax, I'm just finishing off here. See? All done!" Cutting through the thread, she finished up the stitching, stuck a fresh gauze pad to him with some kinda sticky tape , and turned away to tidy up the surgical bits.

"Tell me, though, Sue," he said, as he lowered himself gently to standing, "Is there someplace I can wash up? It's been a long trip to get here and... well, I could do with some hot water."

"Sure, next door," she said, carelessly pointing as she put the sutures away, "Don't worry about the sutures, they'll hold up just fine so long's you don't scrub all that damn gauze off."

He nodded, went behind a changing screen and entered the adjoining shower room. The door hidden behind the screen, all that could be seen of Damian's exit was his gown flopping carelessly to the floor as he went. The door clicked closed, and Sue seated herself, began flicking through a local paper. The silence was strangely complimented by the sound of running water from the next room, a clock ticking on the wall.

In the dark and quiet I began to relax, thinking maybe this 'vision' thing was a vision of things to come. Better times ahead and all that, ya know?

The clock ticked.

Sue yawned and turned a page, browsing aimlessly. Suddenly she caught her breath, clapped her hand to her mouth and leant back in shock, the force of the movement scraping her seat back and away from the desk. Unseen, unfelt, I walked up behind her, leant over to read the piece. As she gasped for breath behind me, I read the text, saw the picture of 'Damian's face next to it. The paper was dated seventeen years ago, seventeen years before I walked into Silent Hill, seventeen years before 'Heather' killed the 'God'. And here was 'Damian' again, looking no different to when I saw him first in those woods. Seventeen years and no difference... I still can't get over that, even now.

I read on, the headline bold and black and in my face: "Notorious Felon 'Danny Brown' unaccounted for in prison disaster." In black and white, the photo took the illusion of difference that hair color created and destroyed it utterly. The paper showed beyond a doubt that the Damian I'd met before was the same as this one after all. But that he was also 'Danny Brown', who was... I craned over Sue's shoulder as we both read... a thief, kidnapper, murderer, rapist.

And hadn't aged a day in _seventeen_ years. I read on, willing everything to somehow make sense.

The door behind us clicked open, but Sue didn't appear to hear it. Damian emerged, steaming from the shower, and, seeing the paper in front of her, must have figured things out himself. He padded silently up behind the seated woman. Now I recognized him alright, he must have dyed his hair, used some colored lenses or some such, cause the man coming up behind the oblivious nurse was, in the pale muscled flesh, Damian himself.

He sighed tiredly and she stifled a shriek.

"I had hoped they wouldn't put that crap out in _all_ the papers," he murmured, leaning past her to grab the paper, "But I guess even Silent Hill gets the news when it's about a local boy."

He patted her on the shoulder, laughed lightly as she flinched from his hand brushing her neck. "Don't look so worried, they got the wrong guy."

"Wrong guy? There were _six_ witnesses in court, the jury was _unanimous._"

"Well... ok, so they got the right guy. But I'm out of all that now. I'm being good, didn't I say? And look, if I'd wanted to hurt you, wouldn't I have done it by now?"

"I... I guess so." He stepped around to face her and she quickly averted her eyes, her face coloring.

"Oh... yeah. There's no towels around here, sorry." He saw her shoulders shaking, stepped forward to embrace her, to... I dunno, comfort her, maybe? If that's what he meant, he done fucked up plenty. She shrieked at the sight of his approaching body, jerked backwards and sprawled out of her chair. Her nurse's uniform skirt rode up her long legs, the blouse gaping undignified as she tried to scramble away from him.

And then he was there, knelt in front of her.

And then he was kneeling between her knees, steaming hot body just about against her own shaking form. His hand over her mouth, crooning to calm her.

_Shhhh, shhhh, it's ok, it's ok_

And then beginning to lose patience and growling at her

_Be quiet, already, just be quiet_

and then hissing, growling, almost yelling

_Shut your filthy noise, bitch!_

And then...

My vision blackened once again, and in the darkness and silence

_No, please. Please no!_

voices and echoes

_Nooo, I'll be good!_

copper stink of blood, sweet smell of old sex

_I won't tell anyone! I promise! Please, no!_

I saw Sue's face, a frozen silent scream pressed against the tiled floor.

And now all I could see was a series of disjointed images.

A doctor with a briefcase walking fast down a darkened hallway unlike any I'd ever seen before.

Sue bleeding. Bleeding now from her head, from her chest, her legs.

Now Damian running, panic on his face. Running down the hallway, pounding through doors and out into the night.

The bloody nurse remained behind, Sue staggering listlessly up and down the hallway, the walls reddened and all torn to hell, her own back broken and hunched up between the shoulders. I became aware of sound and touch again, and I was in that hallway with her, fully ignored as she limped on. The hallway floor clanked under her feet, her shoes squeaking as the blood dripping from the dark places of her body lubricated her steps on the cold red metal.

She reached the double doors of the hallway, but could not go through, and turned jerkily, began retracing her steps. I stumbled back at the sight, I couldn't stop myself. Her face ran with blood, her sweet features contorted with pain, fury, lust, despair, all washing over her, one after the other. The steel floor clanked under my feet as I stumbled back, and I froze. The floor shoulda been linoleum, shoulda been soundless, but it had changed with the walls, with the doors, with the bloodied and battered Sue. I saw Sue, and Sue saw me. Somehow I had fallen through the vision and was really there. Sue saw me, and her face lit up. She ran towards me, stumbling over her own feet, the gushing wounds trailing blood behind her.

_Help me..._

Had I said that? Had she?

_Helllp meeee..._

Didn't matter now, of course, she was there, grabbing at me, hugging at me. Wanting my help, wanting to be saved. She couldn't tell me, of course, couldn't scream even, all that came from her full red lips was a muffled groan. Harder to talk with no tongue. The blood stink rose up at me, blood and... something else, sickly sweet.

I didn't wanna think about what that coulda been, but the stench gave me just enough shock to move, just enough to shove her away and run. Heading for the doors I thought I could maybe break them down but no luck no good the doors are stuck stuck now turn gotta turn. I turned, ran to run away. Try to pass her by but run into a wall, no good, no good, turn again and here she is. She was coming now, grabbing at me, I couldn't shake her off and she hugged me again. Her soft hot flesh, sticky with her blood, warm and yielding like... suffocating me, I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't shake her off.

Darkness at the end of the hall now, lights out.

The lights failed, one by one, and my last impression of that terrible place was of darkness, choking heat, and the awful noise of her rasping breath.

This time I was glad when my sight failed me, when I passed out again.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I came to myself again in the middle of the cold, fog-infested street. The memo in my hand, the 'diary scrap' as I had thought, was now blank, without the date or weekday that had marked it as a journal page before. I got up and stared at it, perplexed. All that was on it, marked in red, was that same symbol I had seen on the 'Storefront Poseables' window Damian had somehow broken. As I watched, that faded too, then the paper itself dissolved into ashes, fell through my fingers. Had that been _real_? Could... would he have...? There was more than just usual nastiness here, was something fucking with my mind? Or was it just that Damian...

My thoughts were interrupted by footsteps behind me. I stood stock still and waited. What _now_?


	21. Pathfinding

CRAWL 21

"Alright," said a voice behind me, "Stay still and lemme see ya..." And suddenly it clicked. Kate! The timing of her findin me, though, kinda weird... and the paper was gone too. Was I maybe supposed to tie the two things in together? To protect her from that bastard? Maybe, I thought, but in the meantime...

"Let me guess," I said. "We're gonna have a little chat?" She gasped, and I couldn't help but grin as I turned. "You're gonna have to think of a new threat, kid." I didn't get a chance to say anything more, though, cause she knocked the wind outta me by grabbing me into a hug. Stronger than she looked, that kid, and she musta been running around a lot before finding me, cause she was burning hot.

"Nathan!" she gasped. "You're alive! You're ok! Uhm… I mean…" She let go, looking embarrassed as hell. "It's good to see you, uh… That is…" I grinned at her again. "Yeah, yeah, you're overwhelmed with joy, I can see that." I tried to tone things down, to not embarrass her. "Hey, you got something in your eye, kid." I turned away, pretended to take stock of the streets while she rubbed her eyes.  
_  
__"_Where've you been?" I asked her. "When the sirens sounded I saw you fall, and I... I _thought_ I heard you when I woke up on the street, but then I couldn't find you."

"I… I guess I got lost." she muttered . "In my home town, too. If this is Silent Hill, that is. I… I dunno where we are, I can't see anything I recognise…" She trailed off, looking unsure now, her eyes downcast.

"Well, I was just looking at the road signs," I said, "and they say we're at the corner of Bachman and Bradbury…"

"Bradbury!" she yelled. "Then we're almost there! I'm almost home!" She took off suddenly, and in a second her pale skin and white clothes had vanished in the fog.I yelled after her, but no answer came back.

Following her was easy, though, and just as well, 'cause as I caught up, I saw her leaning over some damn gaping hole in the road. Holding on to a lamp post, she was swaying, about to fall. The gaping maw in front of her yawned hungry as she fell forward. I sped up, frantic, and just caught her as her fingers slid from the metal pole. My own hand smacked against the post as I grabbed hold of it, scooped her up by the waist with my free arm and pulled her hard against me.

Picking her up was easier than dragging her, so I carried her back to the safety of the sidewalk. Well, the sort of safety. Her body's heat pressed into me as I held her in my arms, her ass against my zipper, her toned belly pressing hot under my arm. With a massive effort I put her down quickly as I could and stood well back, tired out from the run. Leaning against one of the trees lining the road, she blinked about her, getting her head back together.

"I woulda warned you…" I panted, "half the freaking roads are out, and those that aren't…well, I ain't seen anything yet, but I sure as hell heard something. We're not alone, and that's not good news for us." I couldn't be sure exactly what I had heard, but I had sure as hell heard _something_ out there, before finding that paper, and I didn't wanna take any chances. Nor have this little girl take any, either. Which, I guess, is why I didn't tell her about what the paper showed me. This kid was plenty on edge already, I didn't want her to do anything rash. At the time it all seemed just the right thing to do, but something about her just now, just before she went off to find the others and I found this tape recorder, seems to me she found him again anyway. Or he found her. At the time, neither of us knew what we were dealing with, or I mighta warned her, mighta tried to scare her off a little more, but I felt still like I needed to figure things out, so I kept quiet, just mentioned the sounds, the monsters I thought I had heard.

I saw her gulp, and saw the fear on her face. _Well done, old man,_ I told myself,_ now you've scared the hell outta her, what're you gonna do to _help _her?_ I guess I shoulda guessed the fear of the monsters she'd seen woulda worked stronger on her, a little kid, than on a grown man. Still, though, at least she'd be careful now. I hoped. But how to get things back on track?

The map! Perhaps the map could help. Even if the routes I found didn't help us out, at least it'd give her… hell, I dunno, some hope, so faith. Something.

"We can go by… uhm… hang on, I found a map, somewhere…" I pulled it out of my pocket to check, and a piece of paper stashed inside fell out. I grabbed for it, just catching it as it floated down. I hadn't looked real hard at the map before, so I _guess_ it coulda been hidden in there without my noticing, but thinking now, maybe it'd been left there by whatever left the other paper for me to find.

I held the ragged scrap carefully to what light the fog allowed through, squinting to make out the handwriting. The markings of the date on the page , the style of scrawl... Could it be the same kind I had seen before? The same author?

"Looks like… Jan 9th. I think…" I told her.

I read on aloud:

"_Finally made it back. Can't think how they didn't catch me on the way in, they must have known I'd head back home. Or maybe even they can't believe anyone could be that stupid. Something's changed, though. Place is empty. I'll keep this journal, just in case I need to look back on what I find. Should be ok, though, just lie up for a few days, lick my wounds, then maybe skip the country. Need to get to the hospital first, though. Alchemilla's close by, maybe I can find a nice nurse to help me." _

It stops there," I said, and tucked the scrap into my pocket. Nothing more written on it, but if there were more it could be worth collecting them. Maybe it'd make more sense that way. Maybe.

"Weird, like someone was trying to keep a journal of all this… this stuff. What's Alchemilla, anyway?" I asked, hoping she'd tell me something harmless. Hoping I'd maybe dreamt or hallucinated the hospital, the name, the nurse.

"Local hospital," Kate said, "Just across the bridge a ways over there." My heart sank. A local hospital. So I had seen something real. Couldn't just explain it away as some kinda fever-dream. What the hell, though? Why show _me_ that? Why'd the paper vanish, with nothing left to show Kate?

She continued: "It's been around since the town began, but there was a big bust-up about some drug ring and some nurses went missing. I dunno what, but that place always gives me the creeps."

_Great_, I thought, _just great. So that... all of that really happened. But then, if that was _then_ , then how did that nurse see me? How did she grab me? And what in the hell happened to Lisa? She had said she'd go out with him, what in the hell did he do to _her_?  
_  
She shivered, and said. "So what's your map say? How can we get to Levine Street ?"

"Lessee now…" I checked my map, "Midwich leads to Matheson leads to Levine Street. Sort of. What's in Levine Street anyway?"

She mumbled something real quiet.

"What's that?"

"Home! I wanna go home!" she snapped at me. I stepped back, shocked. I'd known she had a temper, but… somehow it was still a surprise her lashing out at me. Guess I'm still just human.

"I'm sorry," she sighed, burying her hands in her hair, "I just… all this is getting to me, and I can't remember when I last slept, or ate, or… anything other than running away or shooting or looking for Ange- HOLY SHIT, ANGELA!"

She gaped at me. "Where's Angela? What… what happened to her? Where's she? If you woke up near me, then where'd she go? And Damian?"

I shrugged. What did I know? I'd followed them as far as I could and then lost them in that hole or hospital or whatever the hell it'd been, and I wasn't about to tell her about that. I'd seen how scared she'd been for the kid just in the church. Knowing what kinda place Angela was probably in now would just make her frantic, and that I could do without, you know? Not to mention that I didn't even know the kid _was_ there. Best to keep quiet.

"You got me, kid, but the way I see it, they've gotta be someplace better than we are. He can take bullets and live, and burn and still walk, and since she's with him…"

"No, you're wrong!" she was crying now, "He didn't take the bullets, you just shot some damn flask he was carrying! The other one I had to dig out, and that damn near broke him with pain!"

So he wasn't a superman after all. Maybe I _would_ be able to teach him a thing or two. If a guy can bleed, can feel pain...

"And Angela…" she carried on, "Ohmigod, Angela! If you had seen what happened to her…"

"The Haunted House you said about?"

"Yeah, that place… Oh God…!"

Oh man, she was really cracking up there, I tell ya. I had to jump in, change the topic, and that fast or she'd just have lost it right there.

"Look," I said, trying to sound as stern as I could, "we can't help them, whatever happened to them. And I'm _damn sure_ that black-wearing bastard aint done for yet, whatever you saw. He's still got shit to mess up for… Well, someone. Best we can do is stay alive and look out for ourselves."

And now she was finally calming down, forcing her breath to slow up. " Ok. I guess that makes sense." She stopped shifting from side to side, stood still, and forced herself back to normal. Or whatever 'normal' is for a girl, anyway.

She turned towards Midwich, then stopped still. "But you gotta promise me something, Nathan, ok?"

"Sure, kid, what's that?"

"Whatever you see, whatever you hear, stay away from the school. Jeff told me there was something up there, in this… this place…"

Great. Not bad enough that she was trusting Damian, now she was taking advice from that pervert Jeff, too. I tried to reason with her:

"Yeah, but Jeff was-"

"I know what he was!" she interrupted me, "I know what he was, you told me what he did. But he didn't lie, did he?"

"No," I said, and the truth of that ate away inside me like acid, "he didn't lie. He was having too much fun with the truth."

"So you'll stay out? It seemed like even he was scared of the place."

"Ok," I sighed, resigned, "I'll stay out."

"No matter what?" she nagged. "You promise you won't go in, no matter what?"

"I promise," I told her, doing my best not to let it show how her whining was getting to me. "No matter what." Women! Never happy with a guy, even when he's agreeing with them. Not that I wanted to go into the school. I'd had enough of that, specially after running into that old student again. Gimme a retail job, even, anything but that crap. Well, ok, I guess I miss it a little, but why would I wanna go to Midwich? An empty school in an empty town on my vacation? Nothing for me there. And that was a best-case scenario. Somehow, I couldn't keep that little voice in the back of my mind from whispering at me that 'empty' hadn't been a good way to describe this place in a long time. There were still... inhabitants here, and why shouldn't they have reached the school?

I shuddered. No, nothing for me there. "No matter what." I repeated.

"Ok," she said." Let's get outta here. This fog gives me the creeps."

And so we made our way out towards Levine street. Ahead of us, heading away, toward the school, I saw movement just on the edge of visibility. Something... something that looked human. A human figure, distant, girlish. I saw it for just a moment, then it vanished into the fog. Or, thought I did, but since Kate didn't seem to see anything, I wasn't sure if maybe I wasn't finally losing it. I hadn't heard anything, that was for sure, so I tried to convince myself that it was just a trick of my mind, that so familiar figure. Those clothes and that hair.

After all, _she_ was long gone.

I mean, she had to be.

There was no way that...

Nah. That was crazy.

It nagged at my mind as we walked on. An question that couldn't be, with an answer that… I couldn't know.

**A/N - Real Life, man. Too much real life... getting in the way of fanfic. :-(**


	22. Parting

She started up again even before we got close to the school:

"When we get to Midwich, we just go straight past the school, ok? Straight past. No detours."

This was getting ridiculous, but I kept my cool. Best I could: "I know, I know. Christ, Kate, you think I'm deaf?"

"Just checking we're both on the same page here."

"Yeah, no problem," I sighed, "same page, same paragraph. Chapter twenty-two, line whatever, 'As Kate and Nathan approached the school...' yadda-yadda. Trust me, kid, I got it.

"I hope so."

We went on along the street, passing the Storefront Poseables place again on our way. My gut tightened, and I worried that Kate would ask about the gaping hole in the window. If she saw the hole, she'd wanna know why it was there, and that woulda led to questions I didn't wanna give answers to. I looked over and saw that... the hole had gone. Kate frowned as we passed, but said nothing. Better that way, I figured. Safer.

As Kate and I approached the school, I got a weird sense from it. Not just a weird feeling - I'd had that since the fog fell in the woods - but some sense of, I dunno... inevitability... from it. Like it was calling to me, pulling me toward it. Everything else faded out and all I saw was that red building, barely feeling Kate's pull at my arm as I drifted along.

Then I saw her. Lisa, looking so much like the nurse in that vision. Same name, too. But, not that nurse. My wife, left behind back home when I had stormed out but now somehow... here? I remembered seeing her in the park before I got chased into the mall, but I had just dismissed it. A trick of the light and my fear.

Now, though, she was there. At the window, watching me. Waiting for me.

I stopped dead, and everything faded except for the window, drifting towards me slowly, bringing the building closer to me. Or me to the building. And still that blonde head, those piercing blue eyes. The face I had fallen in love with and married stared at me out of the dark, and I found it was closer and closer. The pathway leading up to the building had almost slid under my feet when - 

"NATHAN!" A sharp _smack!_ as a hand slapped me hard across the face. The rest of the world flooded back, street, fence, lampposts. And now the pain, a sharp stinging as I saw the kid in front of me, shaking the life back into her hand. "K- Kate?" I asked, stunned.

The realization of it hit me : Lisa was here with us! In this screwed-up little town crawling with those... those _things_! I had to get her out, somehow had to convince Kate to help me.

"Did you see?" I asked her frantically. "Did you see her? I saw her in the school! She was at the windows!"

"Who?" she yelled, "who was in the school?! The windows are empty, dark. Look for yourself!" She pointed furiously at them. The cold, blind windows. Watching me. But I couldn't have been wrong, couldn't have been mistaken. I'd seen her there!

"Y-yeah, I see. They're empty. Now. But she was there, Kate!"

"Who? Who was there?"

"Lisa. Lisa, my wife…" It had been her. Must have been. No-one else moved like that.

Kate stared at me, her eyes wide in shock. "Your... your what?"

Of course, I'd never told her. I'm not _that_ stupid. "Yeah, you heard." I shrugged. "I guess I don't act like a married man should, huh?" _Ohhh, Lisa_, I thought. If you could see me now, after everything I did. Hell, maybe you can.

My blood ran cold as I remembered the face I had seen in the window, and that beautiful slim figure earlier in the fog... _Lisa_..._ could you really be in this town?_ I stopped myself there. No time for those thoughts, not now. The look on Kate's face was clear enough even for me to see.

"Well, hell," I said, "I… it's not like you go through surgery or anything to make you the perfect married man, ya know?" 

"Married and no ring?" she asked, eyeing me up real suspicious. Suddenly I remembered her blasting at me in the park, what felt like a lifetime ago. And she had picked up another gun since then. My inner survivor piped up at me. _How about you _don't_ tell her why you keep your ring finger bare, old man?_ _Remember how she got when she thought you were eyeing up Angela? _My gut turned at the memory of that gun barrel pointed right at it. Pretty blonde schoolgirl this kid was, sure, but really goddamn dangerous with it "it" being...?.

I shifted my weight, pretended to be unhappy and embarrassed. Well, more than I was. "Yeah, well, ya know… jewelry's for chicks and fags. Not my thing. But look, she was – " A movement behind Kate caught my attention, and I could just see a flick of blonde-red hair pass along behind the windows. "Ah! There she is! Look!"

Kate spun to look, but too late. The windows were all empty again. My heart fell right down inside of me, the disappointment bitter and poison. Gone again.

"Ah shit, she moves too fast," I said. "Look, I know what he said, but…" _But what? _I asked myself. How could I forget what Jeff had said, any of it? He had been right about everything else, and even back at the school he had never really lied. Not the same as honesty, of course, but... I thought, decided on my move. "I can't just leave her there!" Whatever the hell else, I couldn't leave Lisa in there.

"If you go in there, you're going in alone, pal." Kate's face was set. No way she'd change her mind. "I stuck with you back in the mall, but this…"

"The mall!" Now I saw again how I'd gotten separated from Kate as we crossed the park. In my mind I saw that same blonde-red hair in the fog, just ahead, and then disappearing. "I saw her there, too! Well, on the way there. Remember we got separated? I was… I went…" I trailed off, not sure of anything now. Had I seen her? Really? I had seen someone for a second in the park as we crossed it, but... 

"Sure," she sneered, "you went chasing after your wife who might not even have been there, and then-"

I wanted to slap her stupid face for that, pissing on a guy's hopes, but I kept my cool. Stayed calm."Wait," I asked, "how do you know she might not have been there?"

"You weren't expecting anyone but me, I know it, and you sure as hell weren't expecting to see her. Remember, you followed me through the woods? You've been seeing things, man."

"No, I was- I was just out for a walk in the – " But I hadn't been. And she knew it somehow, knew that I'd been following her, watching her, wanting her.

Fuck.

She was cool, though, that pretty little schoolgirl. Told me she could understand why I had followed her, understood that a man had needs. And while she told me I somehow saw it all fresh. The appeal, that is. Why I had followed her. Oh yeah, I saw that. She wasn't that much the innocent after all, then, I could see that. Not bad.

But I stayed with it, though. My resolution. I couldn't leave without getting Lisa outta there. So I stood there, my back to the school, and watched Kate Morgan walk away back to her place. Disappearing into the fog, leaving me behind. She had invited me to go with her, to relax on the 'nice soft sofa' back at her place. But I couldn't follow.

I remembered again, there. That day me and Lisa went to the park, got caught in the rain over our picnic. The rain had caught in her beautiful dark hair , shimmered like jewels in velvet before sinking in, drowning in the darkness. And she had laughed, had loved it. No, I couldn't -

I couldn't give in, couldn't follow Kate and her softness. No matter how much I wanted to, and oh how I wanted to. No, I had to go into the school. Back to that old world of books and desks, so familiar, and so alien. I turned to the doors with a sick feeling in my gut. Guilt at leaving Kate alone? Or guilt at wanting to desert Lisa in the school? Didn't matter anymore now, though.

I started towards to the school again, starting on that pathway long and gray against the front lawn, the fog suddenly obscuring the building itself. So heavy now, so heavy I could just barely make out my hand in front of my face and the ground at my feet. No wonder I tripped and stumbled over... something. I bent to inspect the thing at my feet. A pink bicycle, about the right size for an 8th grader. What the hell? I'd seen these things back when I was teaching in Brahms, but that'd been for kids so very much older than elementary school age, so what was this?

Well, whatever. I had enough to worry about. Probably just left behind by some kid picking up her sister. I shook my head at the fog, my clumsiness, and carried on slowly up the path towards the doors. Which were blocked.

As I got close enough to see the doors, I could make out a dark shape sat low off the ground, blocking my way in. My fingers tightened on the gun trigger, that damn dog! Well, now we could get even, and no-one to stop me. But I couldn't risk fucking up the shot, so held my fire and walked closer still. No dog, though. No, this figure I recognized alright. Damian, that freak. He sat cross-legged leaning against the one door, the other free of any block. His bare katana lay across his knees, gleaming with traces of blood that he hadn't completely wiped off the steel. He raised his head as I got closer, and smiled into the muzzle of my gun before looking up at me.

"You're not much good," he said, "on listening to good advice, are ya, Crawley?

"What the hell? What's it gotta do with you, anyway?" I asked angrily. Good advice? When had this guy ever done anything useful for me?

He raised his sword and I jumped back, Uzi raised. He grinned at me, and swung the tip in a lazy arc, pointing to the door on his right. "That's one place in this little burg you really really don't wanna go, old man." The point swung back around, pointing into the town proper. "But that way, you might just make it out in one piece. Maybe." 

"Ah, whadda you know?" I sneered at him. "I've gotta get in there, I saw my _wife_, she's around here somewhere, around this school! I can't let her stay with all these, these _things_!"

Now I had his attention. Probably he'd never understand it, I told him, he'd probably never know what things like love and loyalty were. Or caring for someone enough that you'd fight and kill and die for them.

He smiled again, shook his head slowly. "Ohhh, you have _no_ idea."

Yeah, right, I told him, no idea how much of a cold murderous kidnapping bastard you are. Fuck you, I told him, I'm going in, to do things you can't imagine for a thing you can't dream of. And I yanked the door open, the entry hall spare and empty in the cold and pale light.

He rose quickly, silently except for the faintest rustling. "You'd be amazed."

And he grinned, raised his sword and stepped forward. I was faster, though. If I didn't wanna go into the place, but if I had to, I sure as hell didn't want this freak there too. I slipped forward and around him before he could enter, and ran through the doorway, swinging the door closed behind me as I went in. But no closing slam came, only a splintering and then a thumping against the door .

A low chuckle behind me. "You think it's that easy?"

I turned in horror, and saw the door hadn't closed. Jammed in the gap between door and frame, the katana was wriggling the wedged door gradually open, splintering away at the wood. The thumping had given way to a fanatical laughter as he kicked against the door, as though something kept it closed against him. Standing halfway across the lobby, I knew the door should just fly open, nothing was stopping it.

Nothing I could see.

"You think it's that easy to keep me out?" he yelled, "to stop me from doing this? You know I won't give up. You know I _can't_ give up."

He was following me! I could feel it! The place itself groaned in fear and pain. Even the possibility of a monster like him coming to a place for children was against the nature of things, even the plaster and wood of the place knew it. Almost as though the door was resisting him, trying to keep him out, from defiling the place.

The air shuddered, I could feel how bad it'd be if he got in, how terrible. But what could I do?

I turned and ran across the lobby. If I could lose him in the school, maybe I could make it out again with Lisa without him getting us.

Maybe we could survive.

Maybe.

I turned, looked back at the main entry doors, my hand rested on the handle of the other door, leading outta the lobby into the school itself. That blade stood out horribly sharp from the entrance door, and the wood groaned against it. The fear grabbed my heart cold and sudden, and I shoved the hall door open, slamming it closed behind me just as I heard the first door give up. A yell sounded behind me as the wood crashed open and I cowered down, back hard against the door in case he tried to charge it.

I braced against the coming impact. Which didn't come.

Nothing but silence. And the hallway stretched out cold and empty on either side of me. The fog rolled against the glass of the doors across from me, leading into some kinda courtyard.

Rising slowly, still braced against the door , I controlled my breathing, tried to think. He was definitely there, behind me. Waiting for me to leave. He'd know I was blocking it. He'd wait to hear me go, and then when my back was turned... I had to decide. Run forever or stand and fight.

Taking a deep breath I turned round, keeping a foot braced against the door, and put my hand out to the handle. Waited with hand above metal. No sound, no rattle on the knob. Nothing.

I sighed in relief. Maybe he had given up. And I slowly brought my hand to the handle.

NOW it rattled! In my hand! I jerked back and stumbled away, my gun remembered now, pointing at the door. I kept my distance carefully, if he decided to stab through that wood, I'd be plenty fucked-up. And now a shout from beyond the wood, echoing flat and empty in the hall.

"Crawley? Crawley, stop fucking around!" He sounded scared. What would scare _him_ ? "Lemme in!" This wasn't good. "Let... let me... It's... She... No, not here." Sounding panicked now, so so close to panic.

The handle rattled as he tried it again, banged the door trying to get out. The door would not open. My heart beat furiously as I watched it, gun still raised. Ready.

"Stop... " From here I could hear him so clearly. Ragged breath. His and another. So high, so clear. So close.

"Stop fucking around..." He sounded really panicked now. "No... Stop there!"

A bang against the door, and I jumped back again.

"No! You were... This place..." A frantic scratching, scrabbling against the door. The wood banged again.

A sudden scream, and then silence.

The doorknob turned slowly, back to its start. A sudden loud CLICK! as it unlocked made me jump, two slugs whined into the wood as my trigger finger jerked. The door swung slowly open. I held my breath, heart sinking into my gut as I watched to see what would be on the other side now. The lobby was empty, the door scratched and scarred on the other side. Where he had stood.

The entrance doors were closed, the air breathing into the hallway cold and dead from the lobby . I reached out to grab the door beside me, slam it closed on the empty entrance, against whatever had scared even _him_, and in a sudden gust of air a paper flew up into my face.

Sputtering frantically, I spun, ripping the paper off my face. As I came to rest I saw the paper. A map of the building.

The doors swung closed behind me with a bang, and the radio in my pocket began to hiss.

Hissing so, so quietly in the empty dark.

Somehow I wasn't surprised.


	23. No Talking

The radio hissed, but real quiet. I figured it was just background noise, that I should be ok to go on. But before I did anything else, I figured I had to check he was really gone. If I could go on looking for Lisa without looking over my shoulder for _him_ all the damn time, I'd feel a helluva lot better. Stuffing the map into my pocket, I took a deep breath and yanked the door open, Uzi at the ready.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I stepped through to check the lobby out , and the door swung shut behind me. Nothing in the corners, nothing but a map of the US on the wall. The exit doors were locked, and I couldn't open them if I'd wanted to. At least that meant nothing new could come in after me, I figured, and shrugged it off.

I turned to leave and was about to go back to the hallway when I noticed the marks on the door. The one he had been pounding and scratching on from the inside. From this side. Raising my hand, I traced out the marks left there. That Jew-star mark again, one star inside another and both inside a big hexagon. In the middle of that, a deep mark, like the wood had just been stabbed. A bloodstain was beginning to dry on the symbol, a few straggling drops running down the door from the stab mark in the wood. I held my hand just there, almost touching the door, and tried to figure it. He must somehow have cut the sign into the wood, and then... What? I looked closer, the blood was smudged out under the stab in the wood like a... like a hand-print.

So now it made sense. Whoever, or whatever, he had been yelling at musta stabbed _through_ his hand right into the wood. That'd explain the scream, I figured; something like that would have to hurt like hell. But why would he take so long to cut the sign in if he'd been afraid of something? Especially instead of fighting it with the knife he'd used to cut the symbol. And where was the knife? Hell, where was he? None of it made sense, but at least he was gone. And so was whatever had attacked him.

I pushed on the door and let myself out, a drop of the blood coming off on my hand as I did. Still wet, still warm. I rubbed it off on my jacket, feeling disgusted, and pulled out the map. The door clicked closed behind me. The map showed this place was real simple. Classrooms, one music room, a couple science labs, and all set running around one main courtyard for recess. Not much fun stuff for the kids, but in a small town like this maybe that didn't matter, maybe they still made their own fun.

I stashed the map in my pocket and turned right along the hallway, my radio still hissing softly at me. Lisa had been at the windows on this side of the building, so I just needed to search the rooms here. No real problem there. If I started at what the map called ' the Infirmary', I could make a clockwise round of the place and find Lisa in no time. At least, that's what the map said. Lisa had been a nurse in Ashfield, so I guessed the Infirmary would be a decent place to start. I opened the door slowly, expectantly. She had to be here.

Nothing. The room was empty, just a bed, a medical cabinet with the door swung open, a desk and a chair. No Lisa. I didn't understand. She had been here, I had seen her through the window, how could she just run out on me like that? The bitch! Still, she had to be around there somewhere, and when I found her I'd make her remember who was boss. She'd regret running off from me.

Back into the hallway then, and I only noticed how silent the radio had been in the Infirmary now that it started up again in the hallway. This time it was louder, though, and I stopped to slap it against my hand a couple times. Neither that nor messing with the buttons made any damn difference, so I gave up and put it back in my jacket. I had to check the school reception before I left this part of the school.

0o0o0o0o0

As I passed the doors to the lobby, the static increased suddenly, and I spun round, panicked. Gun up, I saw the doors swing open toward me. I backed up quick, peering forward to see who was there. Nobody. I stepped forward to check the area out again, but didn't somehow want to go back in as I had before. Just as I got to the doors, they slammed suddenly closed. I grabbed the handles to open them, but nothing budged. Once I found Lisa I'd have to find another way out, but first the reception had to be checked. I turned to the reception office, and caught just a glimpse of movement, a small female figure in a blue and white school dress. I called to her, but she ran on through the doors leading out to the next hallway along. Trying to follow her was useless, the doors had locked after her. Confused and, yeah, a little scared, I turned my back on those doors and went into the reception office.

Nothing. Books and registers on a counter, and a door beyond that led to an old office, I guessed. Figuring it to just be a storeroom, I was just gonna leave that one be and try to leave this whole side of the school, when I heard voices beyond it. Male and female in hushed conversation. I came up close to the door to listen, not wanting to be heard myself, but couldn't make anything out. The tone of the man's voice was level, like someone trying to calm another. The woman's voice... wasn't, and rose and fell like someone who'd just about break down as say anything else. Every now and again the man's voice would break off with a sharp gasp, and then carry on. Each time this happened, the woman's voice got worse. I wanted to know what was going on, and that overcame my wanting to stay hidden. I put my hand to the doorknob.

Sudden silence beyond the door, not even a whisper of the voices.

I opened the door slowly, gun raised and my gut tied up in knots. The room was empty, with no other doors leading in or out. Great. Another freaky dead end. Nothing in here except two couches facing each other across a coffee table. Nothing on the coffee table except... what? A coffee spill, looked like. Drops that had pattered onto the table, pooled around close to the couch across from me. Nothing really wrong with that, I know, but I somehow didn't wanna be in that room anymore. The place didn't feel abandoned, didn't feel empty. I felt watched, repelled from the room. Like something really didn't want me there. Like if I stayed much longer, there'd be trouble

I left as quick as I could and got back to the hallway. With the doors at both ends locked, my only option was to cross the courtyard. I didn't spend any time studying the map, my back felt too exposed turned to the reception, and I was too afraid to turn and face... whatever I might see there.

I took a deep breath, trying to control my sudden fear, and opened the door out to the courtyard. If you were to ask me now I couldn't swear to it, but at the time I thought I did.

I thought I heard the door behind me. Click open.

I thought I heard footsteps. Behind me.

Coming from the empty room.

My nerve broke and I ran through the door, slamming it behind me, and bolted across the courtyard. I didn't even dare stop in the next hallway, but just barreled off left, frantically following the map. Left and right and up to the stairs and up each solid concrete step like it was all that could help to somehow run up and up. I burst into the next hallway and ran up as fast as I could. I didn't stop till I was inside the first room I came to on the second floor: a classroom, where I could just shut the door solidly behind me and brace against it. Just in case anything followed.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The door was solid and comforting against my back, the stars and stripes by the teacher's desk somehow a normal and good thing to me. But I needed to sit, to rest, so it made sense to stagger across and half-collapse into the teacher's chair behind the desk. A 'return to form', I guess you'd call it. I sank my head into my hands for a couple breaths, regaining my strength, and sat up again. And now I wasn't alone after all. In the middle of the room, perched on one of the school desks with her back to me, was a little girl so small she could only just have turned seven, at most . Like the one I had seen earlier, this girl was dressed in that same blue and white uniform. Hunched over herself, hugging her knees, all I could make out was her long dark hair, everything else hidden out of sight. It's strange, I guess, but I was curious. After all that fear and running, I was more curious than scared. But then, what grown man would be scared of a little schoolgirl?

I called out to her, but got no response, so I got up to approach her. She didn't notice me even when I stood right behind her, but jerked bolt upright when I reached out to shake her shoulder. I stood suddenly stopped, my hand still held out, waiting for her to speak. But no sound came. Instead, she slowly raised her own arm, pointed to a corner of the room where I saw, raising my sight, a door into the next classroom, and a taller, older girl in her early teens. Facing the wall, she stood with her hands behind her back, holding them close into the fabric of her blue school uniform, her head bowed silently into the corner.

"Who's tha - " I started, looking back to the girl on the desk. But she had vanished. I looked back to the corner. Nothing. Just empty space. Confused as all hell now, I ducked down to look under the desks. Nothing. Behind the teacher's desk, the same. Nothing. So I was back where I started my run, in an empty room with a real bad, scared feeling in my gut. I decided not to go the way the kid had pointed, and left by the same door I'd come in by. I faced dead ahead. Whatever the kid had been pointing to, I didn't want to see it. I'd make my own damn decisions about all this. I ignored the hallway to my right, and went straight on ahead into the north hallway, overlooking the recess courtyard. Every step deliberate, every breath controlled. If I didn't control myself here, I knew I'd have no kinda chance later.

But then I saw something new, movement up ahead. The north hallway joined the east hallway by doors with frosted glass windows, see, and I could see figures, people, up ahead beyond the door. One tall and dark against the frosted glass, the other shorter and light-clothed, almost invisible in the broken light. I sped up, maybe they had seen Lisa and could help me. I know, it's an insane thought, I know that now, sat here in Konami Burger waiting for the others to come back. Talking into this lump of plastic recording my words, of course I know it's crazy, but it made sense at the time.

I could hear their voices as I got closer, and recognized them immediately. The voices from the reception room! But how had they gotten there so quickly, and without my seeing them at all? I hurried up as I saw them move off to the room nearest them, and just as I entered the east hallway, the door they entered clicked closed behind them. The plate on the door read 'LIBRARY - SILENCE', and I pushed it inwards slowly, silently, not wanting to spook them, not wanting them to run out on me again.

Nothing. Again and again nothing! I was furious, desperate, and really so damn close to giving up right there and just going home again. But there's always something, aint there? And this time it was a book. Open on one of the reading desks in the center of the library was a book on plants and flowers. A scrap of notepaper held the place, and I saw that the book was titled '_Flora & Fauna of Silent Hill_'. The bookmarked page held a description of a flower named 'White Claudia':

"_WHITE CLAUDIA _

_Perennial herb found near water. Reaches height of 10 to 15 inches. Oblong leaves, white blossoms. Seeds contain hallucinogen. Ancient records show it was used for religious ceremonies. The hallucinogenic effect was key. _"

Next to this, a drawing of the plant itself. A plant I recognized. The flower that cult girl had given me before all this started. The flower I had, I was certain, accidentally swallowed the sap of. I suddenly had a really bad feeling about this. Poppies, I knew, could be cultivated to make opium, and I knew mesquite cactus's could be used to make mescaline, the poor man's LSD.Where you find druggie plants, there's almost always trouble. With a sinking feeling, I unfolded the notepaper holding the book open. It looked like someone had been making notes of things going on around him, trying to make sense of things:

"_Notes on board in Police Station, east of river, read: 'Product only available in select areas of Silent Hill. Raw material is White Claudia, a plant peculiar to the region. Manufactured here? Dealer Manufacturer?' _

_Newspaper said mayor died in investigation of this, some anti-drug cop too. Can't find news cutting, must have lost it near the motel. Is this what that blonde nurse was taking? She looked all-out gone last time I saw her. Wonder where she went? That doctor's fucking weird, too,_ _best stay out of the way. _

_Gotta get out of the town. Bachman road blocked off, but maybe if I go far enough south on Midwich I can get past the school and get out. School should be safe enough, damn screechers can't fly indoors! _"

The writing ran sloppy toward the end, whoever had been writing had been in a hurry, and seriously scared. I thought I knew why, too. On top of everything else, a drug that made people hallucinate, experience religious hallucinations. But... the guy writing, he hadn't taken the drug. He had been wondering if some nurse had taken it, like he was new to the whole idea.

Oh. Shit.

Suddenly everything fell into place. The drug, the flower, the hallucinations. They had to all be tied in with this. Whoever wrote the note was caught up in this whole shit, that much was obvious. A 'screecher' could only be some kind of flying monster, maybe like the melted things I saw in the woods. Or the skinned dogs by the mall.

Or. Something worse?

Somehow the drug helped things along, maybe. If the hallucinations had to do with religious ceremonies, that meant magic, and this kind of thing; these monsters and craziness, could only be caused by some kind of really... well, really **real** magic. Maybe you think a grown man shouldn't believe in magic? So did I. I really, really didn't wanna believe in this. I still don't. But, looking around, I see my 'injured' hand, the monsters outside, what I've seen since my first meal here, and I can't not believe. I had to believe, sitting in the library, that it was magic, that it all tied together. That I was neck-deep in the shit of it.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, laying the book down in front of me. I breathed out slowly, opening my eyes slowly at the same time, and damn near choked at what I saw now. Another one of those dark-haired schoolgirls, just standing reading the book covers. This one looked older, about seventeen maybe. She didn't even notice me, just kept browsing the book spines. I kept my voice low, the better to not scare her, and called out to her. She turned slowly and looked at me, but didn't say anything. Her face was empty somehow, no expression on it at all. She raised her hand, pointing, and I pointed at myself in confusion.

"What?" I asked,

"What did I do?"

A smile crept across her face, slow and dreamy, and she moved her hand up slowly, pointing beyond me.

"What?" I asked again, not really expecting a reply. None came.

From behind me though, a sound.

Small, feminine. Like little young voices calling out.

I got up slowly and turned around. From between the stacks, more schoolgirls were coming. Lots of them, all in the appearance of young teen age; all dressed in the same blue and white uniform; all moving slowly toward me with their arms outstretched, like they were pleading, like they were begging. Their eyes blindfolded, their mouths moaning wordlessly, they came towards me blindly, hungrily, their arms open and grasping at the empty air. I looked back to the first girl, the tall one, still pointing, still smiling, and saw her change.

Her hair went from black to blonde to red and back to black in seconds, her eyes flickered as they changed, and then she was gone. I spun on my heel and ran for the door, shaking off the one hand that grabbed at me, and then I was gone too, running like hell with no idea where to go.


End file.
